Office 2003 is completely different from other versions. The custom toolbars are not always stored in the normal.dot file.

I 'think' the key you need to look at is HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word\Data. That stores the toolbar info. Its recreated when Word is run. Perhaps removing that and then running Word after you have your template in place will do it?

Hope this will help get you in the right direction. Good Luck!