Some Start Menu programs will not open

Word works fine, and initially it opened fine from the Start Menu, but now it
doesn't.

First the problem started with Microsoft Word. Click on Word in the Start
Menu (it is pinned to the top left) and it won't open. The Start menu closes
and the desktop appears without opening Word. Word opened for quite a while
before. Now it never opens from the start menu.

When I double click a document, then Word opens. So my work-around was to
create a document called a.doc and always open that document to get to Word.
I figured Microsoft would get around to fixing the problem eventually.

But a few days ago I loaded Expression Web. Initially it opened fine. I
used it this morning again and created a new website for the first time.
Tonight it won't open. I rebooted. It still won't open.

This got me worried. What happens if I start losing the ability to open
other programs?! So I played around with it and discovered:

I can right click on the Start Menu Expression Web program - Properties -
General - copy the URL, go to (My) Computer, paste the Expression Web url
into the address, and open it that way. So Expression Web still works, and
the link stored in the Word shortcut shown in the Start Menu works fine.

I went to Word on the Start Menu and tried right clicking and looking at the
properties. The address is truncated. It shows:

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Microsoft Office

so that is why I figure it isn't working. But I don't see how to modify the
Properties address for Word to put in the full address. How do you do this?

And how did the shortcut address get truncated to begin with?

So I dragged Word to the desktop from C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start
Menu\Programs\Microsoft Office\Microsoft Office Word 2007 and the shortcut on
the desktop works fine.

Then I tried removing the old Word shortcut from the start menu,
successfully. And dragged Word back onto the start menu from
:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Microsoft
Office\Microsoft Office Word 2007. It drags back onto the start menu, but
again won't open. Why???

Does the unsupported Fix they talk about in the KB fix this? and even if it
does, will it cause more problems and should I wait? Now that I know how to
get around the problem, at least I know how to open anything that stops
working so I'm a little worried about trying an unsupported Fix that may not
fix this problem.

Last, C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Microsoft
Office\Microsoft Office Word 2007 icon shows as a shortcut - it has the
little upsweeping arrow in the bottom left of the icon. Why? I don't think
it is a shortcut, but is the actual program executable at that location. Can
you explain this?

Thanks,
Pam Pierce