my friend has windows 98 and office 2000 and when he starts excel he is able to click enable macros then the computer will stall about 30 - 40 mins depending on file size (average 800KB) and then it will finally open. i had a look at it today and tried a few things - e.g reinstalled windows (no deal) - resintalled office (no deal). disabling the anti-virus (no deal) uninstalling the antivirus (no deal) checking security settings for macros and when the workbook is "loading" i notice that when i hit ctrl+alt+delete then program says not responding ? i jumped onto the web and checked a few search sites and google. finally made some progress in finding out there is a patch that i proceded to download and the service pack (made sure everything is up to date ) and still the excel workbook takes so long to open. however smaller excel workbooks load normally and its not just the one file it is many files i even created a "dummy" file just making it 800KB by entering fake data and the same problem. my question to you is how/why does this happen ? and also how do i fix this ?

I tried this with no luck !

Look for 'Tools/Options/General/At startup open all files in:'

I had this problem once, hope it help.