Why is my open office spellchecker not working?

I just got an hp pavilion g6 laptop today (like that matters) and installed Open Office 3.3.0 as my first course of action. Unfortunately, while i'm typing in a document, the spellchecker seemed to not have been working. I opened a new document, and intentionally spelled nonsense words to see if it would work then. nope, nothing. i then tried the manual spellchecker. no dice. I think i may know the reason that it's not working, and that's where my main problem lies. When i go to Tools > Options > Language Settings> Writing Aids and look at Available language modules, there is nothing listed, and the edit option is grey. Also, under user-defied dictionaries, there are four listed: soffice [all], sun [all], IgnoreAllList [all], and standard [all]. Could my problem lie with the ignorealllist one? (it wont delete, either). Could someone please help me, quickly? Thanks a ton.