[mso] strange Office Assistant error in Office XP

I have a client who has been using Office XP without any trouble for
months (years even).  Yesterday she started to experience a weird
problem.  She had been in Outlook all day, reading and writing messages
as usual, and she opened up an email and wanted to forward it to
someone.  When she clicked on "Forward," she says she saw a shadowy box
for the Office Assistant (our friend the paper clip), and then it
disappeared and Outlook froze.  When she restarted Outlook, she got this
message:

"There are no Office Assistant character files present on the system.
Please run Setup in Maintenance mode and install at least one
character."

This behavior continues today, and it is happening in all the Office
applications.  She has restarted Outlook and Word a number of times, and
has also restarted the machine, but the behavior continues.  Has anyone
seen this before, and can you suggest a fix?

Thanks,
Elise
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