Extermely slow NOD32 scan of certain Word documents

My company uses ESET NOD32 Antivirus 4, under Windows XP.
I have a problem with documents I receive from a single source (my law firm). Opening any Word document (*.doc) from this source is annoyingly slow (> a few seconds), even though the documents are small (a few 10's-100's of kbytes). While waiting for the document to open, I see the message "running virus scan" at the bottom of my screen, which I assume is generated by NOD32.
When I use the "select all" feature of Word to make a new copy of the document (with all the same visible text), the new document opens much faster (at least 10x faster). I assume there is something hidden in the Word file (template ?) that makes NOD32 slow. The difference in file size ("original file" - "saved from select all") is only 7 kByte. Is there any workaround for this problem, other than re-saving every document I get from this source in a 2nd version? I have spoken to the IT manager at my law firm and he denies that they add anything special to their Word files.

Saul

 

There's a bug in Office 2007 which causes documents to open slowly even if DMON is only registered in the system. If disabling DMON helps, start Windows in safe mode and rename the file ekrnDmon.dll in the ESET install folder to prevent DMON from being loaded on startup.

 

Thanks, but I forgot to mention, I use Office 2003.
Saul

 

Could you confirm or deny that disabling DMON makes a difference?

 

Will do. However, it will take a few days until our IT person comes around (we're a startup with IT outsourced) - as far as I can tell, you need the administrator password to disable document protection (I assume that's what you mean by disabling DMON).

 

If you are able to change settings in the NOD32 client you can disable DMON (document protection module), so you can test if it makes a difference. You don't need to know the administrator password of the computer if you have the password to unlock ESET configuration (if set, of course).

See screenshot below:
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/349356/ESETNOD32dmon.png
- untick 'Enable Document protection'