Word crashes mid PDF creation - Word 2003 Acrobat 9.3.0

I have a new PC and a fresh clean install of CS5 Design Permuim, including Arobat 9. The organisation is still using Office 2003 and no upgrade path in sight for that. Myself and several colleagues with the same software profile are now experiencing frequent problems with Word crashing mid PDF creation.
This has always been an issue with the ocassional Word file in Acrobat 8, but Distiller always worked as an alternative - NOT this time!
PDF Maker gives no error message, just that Word has encounted a problem and needs to close.
Distiller produces the following log message, then freezes completely. I then have to force quit Word to exit!
%%[ ProductName: Distiller ]%%
%%[ Error: syntaxerror; OffendingCommand: --nostringval-- ]%%
Stack:
/mF_OTF_V
%%[ Flushing: rest of job (to end-of-file) will be ignored ]%%
%%[ Warning: PostScript error. No PDF file produced. ] %%
Not all documents are affected, but I can remove almost all of the content from the affected document and it still causes the error.
I have tried repairing Acrobat - no change.
One other odd symptom - after each crash, the default printer on the machine has changed to Adobe PDF.
I can successfulkly make the PDF on another machine which has not been upgraded to Acrobat 9. The rest of the settings are identical on the two machines, they are both running a standard organisation environment, with the same verion of word etc.
Can anyone suggest how to fix or at least isolate the cause of the problem?

Please update to latest Acrobat 9 release which is 9.4.2.
Also do let us know
a) office 2003 flavour: Standard or professional?
b) OS flavour? Also whether it is 32bit or 64bit?
Also as you mentioned that "Not all documents are affected", so we would require any of your affected file to analyze the issue. Can you please share the file? You can use acrobat.com to share the file.
Thanks,
Vishal

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