Random illegal operation messages

[tony draper]

Just finished putting together new machine,
Athlon XP 1.5 cpu, 256 meg 133 ram newly formated hard disc with new win 98 installed.
I am getting lot of ,
(This program has performed illegal operation) messages,
I click on the screen and the banner disapears and the computer just continues doing what it was doing.
Happened a few times last night when I was downloading directx 8, it does not seem to be associated withany particular prog or utillity, it does not seem to effect whatever is going on, it is begining to irritate me howeve.
Will be greatful for any ideas.:confused:

[FL310]

Which programs are open at that time and what precisely did you do just before the error message appears?

What Harddrive are you using, how much of that harddrive is occupied already, do you have a sidewinder joystick attached...

Read this (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q175703) also you may think it does not apply, follow it, also the link at the bottom concerning the harddrive!

[PaperTiger]

This is Micro$oft's standard 'something went t!ts up but we have no idea why' message.

As best I can understand it, it's the equivalent of the old mainframe 'protection exception' fault. Caused by two programs trying to use the same memory chunk. I get them occasionally ever since I installed a Twain driver, and I've followed every suggested 'fix' but they still happen.

The only semblance of a pattern I can see is if I let the machine quiesce before clicking something else, I don't get these errors.