Preserved Topic: illegal operation bug

"This programme has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down"
I keep getting this message coming up on various programmes I am using including Adobe.
Can anybody help me please with a not to technical and simple way of getting rid?

Duh....buy a new computer!

Re-install Windows and/or check your computer for viruses...

Well, it is normal to get that message once in a while. It means that Windows is an unstable operating system. Not too much you can do about that if you want to use Windows. However, if you're getting it a *lot*, or consistently when you try to do a certain thing in a program, you might want to try reinstalling the program that's causing the problem or something. Again though, if it's occasional, then it's normal. Maybe you might also try using fewer programs at once to keep memory available, that may or may not help.

Yah, re-installing ceratin apps could be it, but it could also be the hardware. I had a PIII at work that crashed *all* the time. (Serious "lock the mouse" type crashes, I had to pull the plug, frozen!) It turned out that one of my memory chips was bad, too slow for the motherboard. I switched a jumper on the motherboard dropping my buss speed from 133Mhz to 100Mhz, and all problems stopped, it never crashed that way again, and eventually I got a new ram chip and sped it back up again.

Your pal, -doc-

I'll add this, since I didn't see it yet. The major reason Windows freezes, is that alot of software is "compatible" or able to run under Win9x+ and that means they don't always follow the cpu access rules. When a program tries to directly control or hog the cpu, the operating system will freeze. It's a co-operative multi-tasking system and every one share cpu time. That's why none of the MS Office programs will crash your system. Well, at least they don't mine. It's also why companies often use NT/2000 on workstations: it's pre-emptive, meaning it forces each program to wait it's turn or get shut down without affecting other running programs.

You Gurus please correct me if I've misstated something

My latest computer has had some weird crashes... way too often too. It's a PIII 500, got it last christmas. Shortly after I got it, it started crashing -- full crash, mouse and all -- after about 5 minutes after being turned on. Then I went on vacation for a week and came back and now it only crashes daily or so.

This sounds like a hardware problem. Probably crappy RAM, I did get the computer from some no-name cheap company. Oh well, I guess a crash every so often beats paying twice as much for a dell.

Sometimes I get the blue screen of death, but I can't CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart even, there's no way out. And it's always because of some internet-related program like napster, IE, or AIM. Damn internet.

You're too fast than your computer. Upgrade.

get win2k! crashes never for me!

Try to reduce the virtual memory photoshop uses.
I'm running PS6 on Win2k and got those errormsgs first, too - after I reduced the memory usage to about 15% (of my 128MB) it worked fine.

Hope this can help
- nap

I musst be confused. Isn't virtual memory HD space and not RAM

it is but usually you want to set it to some proportion of your physical RAM


Walking the Earth like Kane

Win2K rocks. It's very stable. At least for me it is.

Windows 2000 rocks, Windows XP will rule, etc...