[gr8fl4porsche]

Did you update Excel only or the entire Office group? Not all Office product upgrades are backwards compatible with the other members of the group.

Check to make sure that there are no programs such as IE - Outlook - Word - Excel opening twice. Sometimes XP will open MS products twice causing similar symptons as you described. Even though you exit a program such as Word - there is still another application of Word running in 'not responding' mode.

I would uninstall and reinstall the entire Office suite using the same version of all programs - I have noticed very little difference between the upgrades over the years - at least in the manner in which I utilize Mr. Gates products.

Disable Norton AV when installing and uninstalling programs. Norton AV monitors all .exe programs and can cause many problems.