I finally figured out what was going on with Word 2000's installer, the one that kept popping up when I tried to run a program like MP3Gain, or click on a link.  See An XP Reinstall & Windows Update - lessons learned for more on the problem.  Apparently the installer does periodic checks to make sure Word 2000 is intact… and when it discovered that I'd deleted some of the fonts it had installed, it got persistent, nay insistent, that I pop in the Word 2000 cd and let it 'fix' the problem.  It's like it was saying, "I don't give a **** if I'm being irrelevant, impudent or irritating… just plunk in that cd and let me work, or I'll keep being an ass until you do what I tell you!"

Normally I'd have told the Word installer to **** off and torn XP apart trying to work around the problem in my own way.  But this time I let it put back the fonts, restore shortcuts, anything to make it shut up.

"to everything there is a season"… a time to defy Microsoft, a time to give in. :-)