"Illegal Operation" message ...

Windows 98SE OS

All of a sudden, when I am on line using Yahoo engine, I find a site, and try to enter one of its pages, I get the "illegal" window and lose the Internet connection altogether.

Details are:

EXPLORER caused an invalid page fault in
module MSVCRT.DLL at 0167:78015ca2.
Registers:
EAX=0000f3a0 CS=0167 EIP=78015ca2 EFLGS=00010246
EBX=00000010 SS=016f ESP=01c6c1f8 EBP=01c6c208
ECX=7803a13e DS=016f ESI=70a7f3a0 FS=5a77
EDX=0000000f ES=016f EDI=01c6c242 GS=0000
Bytes at CS:EIP:
66 8b 0c 41 f6 c1 04 74 6b 8d 48 d0 3b cb 0f 83
Stack dump:
01c6c2ac 70a741cc 00000000 00000000 01c6c264 78015c08 01c6c240 00000000 0fffffff 00000000 637a24ad 01c6c240 00000000 00000010 00000001 635e7e2c

I reinstalled Windows 98SE and ran virus check.

How do I solve this problem?

 

A common cause of the error you're getting is the presence of the Yahoo! Companion Browser Toolbar. See the Microsoft Knowledge Base article, How to Uninstall or Turn off the Yahoo! Companion Browser Toolbar for possible fixes.

If that doesn't help, you can try replacing the msvcrt.dll. First, make a backup copy of the existing msvcrt.dll file in case you need to put it back. To do that:
1. Navigate to C:\Windows\System folder
2. Right click on the msvcrt.dll file, left click on Copy
3. Navigate to My Documents (or any folder other than C:\Windows\System where you can easily find the backup copy should you need it), right click on an empty space in that folder, left click on Paste

Once you have a backup copy of the file safely tucked away somewhere, to replace msvcrt.dll with a shiny new copy:
1. Insert your Windows 98 CD into the CD drive
2. Select Start/Run, type SFC in the 'Open' box and press enter
3. When 'System File Checker' (SFC) opens, select 'Extract One File from installation disk'
4. Next enter msvcrt.dll in the box and press enter
5. When the 'Extract File' window opens, 'Restore From' should be set to your CD rom drive letter as X:\Win98 (change "X" to the drive letter of your CD drive
6. The 'Save file in:' C:\Windows\System
7. Click OK and follow the prompts

If you don't have a Windows 98 disk, check to see if there's a Cabs folder inside the C:\Windows\Options folder. If so, change the "Restore From" box to "C:\Windows\Options\Cabs" (without the quotes).

If replacing the msvcrt.dll makes things worse, put the copy you made back into the C:\windows\System folder.

 

Appreciate the reply.

It seems that the problem is MS Explorer as a second message window states "There is a problem with Internet Explorer. Restart computer ..." or something similar.

 

Hive - try this cleanup/fixup and see if it helps. If often does with the strange, one-off problems on 9X systems. At worst you will have a cleaner PC that runs a little faster and better.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

General clean-up instructions for Win95/98/ME

• Open a browser window and dump all TIF (temporary internet files) and cookies. Close.
• Open windows explorer and
  .. delete the contents of all temp folders
  .. delete any files in c:\ with a name filennnn.chk (where nnnn is any number so file0001.chk, file1034.chk, etc)
• verify that you have fewer than 500 files & folders directly under c:\. If you are close to that number, remove or move some files.
• empty the recycle bin
• boot to DOS
• from the command prompt do the following
  .. scanreg /fix <ENTER> (press the ENTER key)
  .. scanreg /opt <ENTER>
  ****note that 95 does not have scanreg.exe but a copy from 98 or ME will run fine if you can get one
  .. scandisk c:\ /nosave /autofix /surface <ENTER>
  .. Win /D:M (forces a safe mode windows start)
• Run another scandisk (start~programs~accessories~system tools) and check for a standard scan and to fix all errors found. The DOS scan couldn't check for long file name issues.
• Run a defrag
• Reboot to normal Windows.

 

Still gettting Illegal window...

Newt, Thanks for help.

I did all the things you suggested, and still getting the illigal window and subsequent browser crash.

But, I used CCcleaner to dump the temps you mention and used another program you gaive me last year to dump all the .dat files (which I use regurlarly anyway.) I ran scan-disk and defrag and whatever.

Still, at least I can do this now on this machine, until the window pops up and then redo the desktop and regain the browser. I might add that the crash only affects the browser. The connection remains and I can use the new browser until the machine decides it has had enough.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I seem to recall that the Illegal window has something to do with a memory problem, the details in the above notwithstanding.

 

Anytime Internet Explorer starts having problems, a common cause is spyware.

If you haven't scanned for and removed spyware recently, download, install, immediately update and scan with at least two of these free and effective spyware removal programs: Spybot, Ad-Aware and Ewido.

Using all three...one at a time...is even better since each tends to find things the others miss.

Some have full-time spyware protection features. Spybot's is Tea Timer, for example. If you choose to enable a full-time feature, enable only one. Running more than one all the time in the background can cause conflicts.

 

Update, finally

I always try to keep the "helpers" updated on results, and, though late, I am back.

I have applied the suggestion, both ...wares applied as instructed and no spyware noted;I employed ccleaner, easyclean and the dat remover, reloaded 98SE and downloaded MS latest upgrades.

The Illegal window keeps coming back and now, after downloading MS's latest security upgrade, I am missing shlwapi.dll and cannot get windows up at all. (I will put this problem up in the appropriate thread).

The Illegal window appears mostly when I open Explorer. If it does show, then a scond window appears indicating Explorer problem but I click outside of it and can use Explorer as long as I use the top line (http etc) to get to web sites I need, but that does not always work. Sometimes, Explorer shuts down and I have to restore the desk-top.

Email transactions run fine.

This all started with my first MS download and as noted above, has exacerbated to point where I now have another problem and cannot use that machine.

Thanks.