As of a couple days ago, I can't open the Excel application on my laptop or
any .xls files I've created. I get no error message. The hourglass starts
up briefly, then goes away. I have no problem opening Word, PowerPoint, or
Outlook.

It happened the day following the loading of several updates (though this
may be a coincidence). When I was going to put the laptop into standby, it
said there were several updates to be installed, so I followed those
instructions instead.

I have the original CD that I loaded Office 2003 from. I was going to
attempt to re-installing Excel by itself. Can anyone see a problem with that?