MS Office re-install to overcome 'Loading Front Page' start-up err

My fiancee has a laptop, with XP installed from her employers network drive a
few years back. For the last year or two it starts up extremely slowly and
has a window something like 'Loading Front Page'... then an 'Unable to
load error'. It takes 20-30 minutes to load-up.

From looking into this before, I understand that Office is trying to load,
and is looking for more recent components that can only be downloaded from
the network (or install disks). Well we are now a full 12hr time-zones away,
although she is still with the same employer, so there is no chance it can be
overcome that way.

I just bought a new and full retail copy of MS Office Home last week, which
says it gives me a license for installation on three computers.

Would one course of action be to uninstall Office from this laptop via
Add/Remove, and then reinstall a clean and up to date copy from my discs?

If she has say sub-directories where Office by default stores and saves
files (My Docs, My Pics etc) will those be preserved, or would this then
require an element of rebuilding the software to data-file links?

Many thanks. JW