illegal Operation errors

It is a way Windows say to you "No can do/will not work and you are not authorized to do that." Or Windows don't recognize the program you are runnung or trying to open.In other words you aren't smart enought to do that! Or you are trying to do it the wrong way. Just forget it is there - it will not stop you from operating your pc. You might have to restart sometimes, because you done something you shouldn't done. Hope this helps.

Here's a really good explanation from www.whatis.com:

An illegal operation, a term often seen in error messages, is a command to the operating system or an instruction to the computer processor that specifies an operation that is unknown to the operating system or processor and that therefore can't be performed. The result is that the operating system or processor usually terminates the program that made the "illegal" request. If that program was an application that you were using, you may find that data you were entering was lost or, in some cases, can be recovered from a backed-up copy that the system made for you.
A computer's processor knows what operation to perform as the result of an operation code (or opcode) within the instruction. Failing to recognize an opcode, the processor will return information to the operating system which in turn will usually terminate the application program that sent the bad instruction and issue a message to the user about the illegal operation. An illegal operation may mean a bug in the application program (or occasionally in the operating system) or it may be the result of a combination of unusual circumstances that the program and operating system could or did not anticipate. In the latter case, the problem may not be repeated or may be intermittent.

The usual practice if you get an illegal operation message is to continue working if the application is still running, or to restart the program if it has been terminated, and, ifthe problem recurs, to reboot the operating system and try again. If you continue to experience illegal operation errors with an application, report the problem to the software vendor.

Hope this helps!

What causes them cannot be answered with a list of reasons because the list is way too long, some happen only once, and new reasons come up all the time. But basically some combination of events happened between the user, Win98, and all the applications and parts of the PC that causes Windows to issue a STOP. It thinks it would be better to stop trying to do it and either end the application, or stop this particular instruction.

In reading the first answer I get, and I could be wrong, thefeeling that you as the user might think you did something bad. Having supported PCs for a long time I have to laugh and calm fears of those who call and want to know how they became "illegal" and is anyone going to come take the PC away. Rest easy and realize that most of the time YOU didn't do anything wrong, but you might help in preventing future happenings.

Think of it as an orchestra, you're the conductor, the musicians are the applications and operating system, and the instruments are all the PC parts and devices.

When you conduct the orchestra and a wrong note happens is that your fault. Not really. The player played it wrong, or the instrument had a bad part. The music can still go on but at the next rehearsal your job as the conductor will be to check why so it won't happen again.

You've heard music that should sound good but the conductor is directing it too slow, or too fast or wants too much horn sound and it doesn't come out just right. This would be like you having oh 20 windows open, 3 chats going, burning a CD of mp3's and then wanting to open office to do a term paper. Something is going to go wrong sometime.

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