open the normal.dotx (or normal.dotm, whichever is default) template for editing (not just double-clicking on it). Make your changes and save it, then close Word. See if that does it - certainly when making changes to the layout of Word documents, it won't save that unless you specifically do so to the default template, so you never know.
Located in C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates in Vista/7.