normal.dotm problem

I have windows 8.1 and using MS Office 2007. Lately Word sometimes opens slowly and shuts down slowly. From my understanding this is sometimes caused by a corrupt normal.dot file (or in my case the file is normal.dotm). It is also my understanding the way to fix this is to rename or delete the file and when Word opens it will recreate the file. The problem is that as soon as a new one is created it becomes corrupt again as it will then have an exclamation mark next to it. Does anyone know of a reason that it will continue to become corrupt? Thank you ~Frank~