dogman,

That doesn't make sense unless you don't have a copy of MSWord on this PC.
I've been running OE v6.0 for some time on my home PC, and it works fine.
WinXP and OE are bang up to date (of course!), and no problems ...

To see if it's really disabled, create a new email and hit F7 (shortcut to spell checker).
You could possibly have customised OE to omit this tab, so F7 will give you a definitive answer.
Also check Tools->Options->Spelling, and make sure this is enabled, which will spellcheck it when you try to send the email.

I'd also make sure the csapi3t1.dll is in both locations suggested by my original link.
I spent some time fiddling with this about 2 years ago, and for some odd reason it needs to be in both locations on my PC.