Update:
If I create a brand new document there is no problem and no prompts.
If I delete nomal.dot, and then open a document, I can close it the first
time with no prompt, but if I try again, the prompt to save changes comes up.
As far as I know, there are not automatically updating fields in the
documents--they could not be simpler.
Another bit of info: This new laptop came with Office 2003 preinstalled
with a 60 day trial period. I installed Office XP/2000 (full licensed
version I had) over this. Not sure if this was significant. There are two
separate folders that contain normal.dot (I tried deleting both)--The are
located in C-Doc and Settings-User Name-Application Data-Microsoft-Templates.
There are actually two "User Name" folders each of which is a slight
variation on my name. If navigate to the the Template folder for each, there
is a normal.dot file there. Again, I deleted both of the normal.dot files,
but it only partially and temporarily corrected the issue.
Finally, if I rename a file, it will sometimes prompt for saving changes but
not always.
Clearly this problem is related to the normal.dot file as you point out--I
just need to know how to fix it.
Again, many thanks.