Weird things happening with my Outlook 2000

[coolshop]

Normally, when I send and retrieve mail in my Outlook 2000, a small 'status' box pops up that shows the number of messages being retrieved, and a black line going back and forth as they are retrieved. About a week ago, that suddenly stopped popping up - messages are still retrieved and the status only appears on the right bottom of the program.

Now, today, all of a sudden, *most* of my incoming messages have an attachment which is entitled 'the original subject of the message.txt'. I haven't opened any because I am paranoid, but normally when a message with that title/.txt appears it is harmless.

Anyone have any ideas what the heck might be happening in my outlook? I do have Virus scans that run daily with updated virus files...

Thanks
Amy