I have tried everything listed here (Excel 2003) AND completly removed OFFice
and reinstalled it and no luck.

The work around is to save a single sheet with the gridline color set to
GRAY 50%, and and inserted sheets will be blank until you repete this
process. The templates are in XLStart (not the default template folder). It
needs to be named BOOK and saved as a TEMPLATE not an excel document. This
works, but I do not like not knowing how to really fix the problem.

Let me know any suggestions, please...