Is it me, or does Acrobat just really suck?

OK. Now we've got something to work from:

• When you uninstalled/reinstalled the program, did you use the Adobe AcroCleaner tool that Dave talked about? It's not inconceivable, even though we're talking about two systems, that some type of update corruption messed up your Acrobat installs. Using the AcroCleaner tool reaches through your system and removes any and all remnants of your Acrobat installation. It's really the only way to be sure that you have completely removed any hanging pieces of Acrobat parked in the nether regions of your system. You can get to that utility through this link.
• But before that, you might want to try a couple other things that may make things work better for you. You say you're using Microsoft Word to create your form layout. By default, it saves files in .docx format, which includes a bunch of xml-based data in the background that can conflict with laying any data functions, not just Acrobat Form Fields, to the document structure. You may want to try saving a copy of the file in Word 97-2003 document (*.doc) format. This retains all your MSWord formatting, but strips out that xml-like data substructure from your Word document. Try using the .doc version of your MSWord document and see if that works better for you.
• Did you use Adobe Acrobat to automatically create and define your form fields? You may want to try creating a couple of data fields manually, using Acrobat's Field tools.
• First, have Acrobat create a PDF from your MSWord document with the Menu>Create>PDF from file... menu command, rather than use the Menu>Create>Create form... menu command that automates creating a form for you.
• When the PDF opens, Click on the Form field tools button just to the left of your document window, as illustrated at right. Here you can manually create form fields like Acrobat does automatically through the Create form... menu command. Try to manually enter a few fields into your PDF file, adjust them as you'd like them to fit, then save the document. 

So, the plan of attack I would suggest you try next is to 1) Create a MSWord .doc format source file, then see if Acrobat's automatic form creation tools work better for you with the older, non-xml fortified file format, then 2) Create your form manually using Acrobat's form field tools and finally, if need be, 3) Use the AcroCleaner tool to completely wipe out your current Acrobat install, reinstall and try steps 1) and 2) again.

Hopefully something in this support tree will help you past your issues.

Randy