The problem may instead be that when you installed MS Office, you didn't already have a PHYSICAL or VIRTUAL printer already installed as the default. That's been the problem with the last six Win7 machines I've installed to. I forgot how I solved it with the others, so when trying to install my sixth machine over the weekend (yes, started last FRIDAY), finally yesterday I remembered what worked.
Steps:
1. Uninstall all MS Office-related products. Only complete uninstallation corrects the problem, at least if you're using MS Office 2003 and prior. ALL components must be uninstalled. Also, if you installed MS Office to some drive other than C:, uninstall and reinstall to C. (Adobe doesn't work rightly with Word, if the latter isn't completely installed on the C drive.)
2. Make sure that in WINDOWS you have a physical or virtual printer set as your default, and that it works (i.e., print something). If you've uninstalled your pdf converter, install it now UNLESS you want it to create add-ins for Word (Acrobat 6-7,9 create Word add-ins, as does SmartPDF Creator Pro).
3. Then, reinstall MS Office products one by one, testing whether your default physical printer is recognized by them.
4. If 3 is successful, then install your pdf converter. If not, then you've some other problem I don't know how to fix.
5. Your pdf converter, if it installs add-ins, then needs to be tested inside and outside Word. With Adobe Acrobat, usually only the add-in works, but Adobe still can't convert outside Word. If you convert to Acrobat inside Word, be sure to uncheck the 'reflow and accessibility' boxes, and to check the 'links' boxes that you want to port through. Else, they won't. Somehow, reflow conflicts with links, and prevents them from being recognized when viewed in Adobe Acrobat.
6. The result of #5 is that one of the two conversions (inside or outside Word), works correctly. I've never seen both of them work correctly.
7. Before you allow Windows updates, clone your hard drive. Windows updates tend to damage pdf conversion, and I can't say why or what kind of updates. I only know it happens, because it's happened to me many times since November last. So now I've learned that when I have this problem, to just clone before applying updates, then if the problem recurs, to clone back to my hard drive using Clonezilla, turn off the machine afterwards, and then boot up.
I wish I could stop the updates, altogether. Finally, this procedure was used on 32-bit Windows, though since you're using MS Office 2003, even on 64-bit, you should have the same problems as I did.
