Hello! I also have Dell Dimension 4100 with Mic. Word 2000, having no problems.
Did you get Works Suite 2001 which comes with Word 2000,(pre-installed) then if you installed Office Word on top, they will conflict (that`s what Dell support told me)
So when I installed Office program, I did custon install so that Word 2000, from Office program would not install on top of existing Word. When doing custon install, check mark beside "not available" for Word, this way won`t install over.

you can use the office 2000 repair utility in case you somehow corrupted it. i dont use winme but in 98 go to a/r programs, click office 2000 and then it will ask you if you want to uninstall or repair. select repair. if that doesnt work, i suggest you do a reformat in reinstall the os and office one step at a time. btw dont ever use the find fast feature on office, since its a resource hog. also you might want to check the msft kb artice database for something regarding a memory leak. i heard about it but since i dont care for nor use winme, never bothered to read it.