Dw Illegal Operation

Hi,

I'm getting a message that Program "Dw" has performed an illegal operation. What do I need to do to correct this problem?
Thanks.

 

Do you have Kazaa installed? This comes with alot of spyware. Download Adaware and run a scan.

http://www.lavasoftusa.com/

 

SpyBot Search & Destroy will also remove the offending program, as it is adware.

 

You didn't give much detail on the error but here's what I found with a groups.google search:
========copy/paste========
From: Mike M (No_Spam@Corned_Beef.Only)
Subject: Re: Error Message: Dw has caused an error in DW. EXE
Newsgroups: microsoft.public.windowsme.software
Date: 2003-05-26 11:14:40 PST

Lots of experience of this message as could be seen by looking through the
various newsgroups but to save you the trouble:

The most common cause of dw.exe errors is a program called DownloadWare which
is used to pop-up adverts onto your desktop and distributed "free of charge" with Kazaa. For more details see
http://www.doxdesk.com/parasite/DownloadWare.html where you will see that users with DownloadWare installed often find they also have Network Essentials
installed which is yet more adware/spyware.

This might be a good time to pop over to Lavasoft (www.lavasoftusa.com) and
grab yourself a copy of Ad-Aware and also get a copy of SpyBot from
http://security.kolla.de and check what other unwanted scumware might have
been added to your PC. Note that many of these programs can cause a
significant performance hit and are often the cause of problems with both
Explorer and Internet Explorer.

If that isn't the problem and you are free of unwanted spyware, then:
b) This problem could be the result of being infected with the W32-HLLW.DW
trojan. For more details see
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.hllw.dw.html so this might be a good time to check your system for viruses, worms and other trojans using a virus scanner with updated signature files

Finally:
c) it could be nothing more than problems with Microsoft's error reporting program
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/office/officexp/maintain/CrpErRep.asp
which has been installed by some IE users and is included as part of Office XP in which case you might get more help in an Office NG once you've eliminated the first two possibilities although personally I think this last possibility is unlikely to be the cause of your problem.
--
Mike Maltby MS-MVP
mcmaltby@hotmail.com