Illegal Operation ain't just a river in Egypt.

January 5, 2005 8:46 PM

ComputerFilter: Everytime I access a webpage with special characters, I get an illegal operation. (+)

Running Windows 98, first edition, and always have this pesky problem occur with any page that features special characters - this, strangely enough, includes kottke.org for some reason. I can provide more information/specifics if necessary. What could possibly be causing this to occur to begin with?

posted by GirlFriday to computers & internet (9 comments total)

Not that I think I can really help you, but it might help others to know if this is specific to a particular browser..?
posted by juv3nal at 10:00 PM on January 5, 2005

Everytime I access a webpage with special characters, I get an illegal operation.

What are we talking about here? Bathtub kidney removal, extra arm attached, that kind of thing?

Ha. But seriously, what's your Browser? Does it give you the same error if you load special characters in another program such as MS-Word?

I'd first try reinstalling the fonts if you can dig them up from the Microsoft home page (I'm not having any luck).

If that didn't work, I'd go into the Fonts menu of your browser of choice (it should be FireFox by now, in which case it's Tools->Options->General->Fonts & Colors) and force your browser to display in a particular font (by clicking the check box at the bottom). Then see if the browser crashes. Try to find a font that doesn't crash. It may be that one particular font is corrupt, and all the special characters for that font are crashing when a web page calls for them.

That's just what I'd do. I've never heard of this problem before. Good luck with that third arm, though.
posted by Hildago at 12:10 AM on January 6, 2005

I'd guess that this may have something to do with browser helper objects being installed in IE (I'm assuming you are using IE) and one of them may be responsible for incorrectly parsing some characters in a webpage. If you have anything like the Google toolbar et al. try to uninstall it first, then try visiting the page again.

Or, try running Ad-Aware and clean-up any spyware on your computer that may have implanted itself in your browser. Also, make sure that you are running the latest version of Internet Explorer and Windows is fully patched (Windows Update).

A few side recommendations:
Microsoft has dropped all extended support for Windows 98 due to the age of the product. I know, fiscal/hardware considerations sometimes hinder upgrades (especially of this size) however, Windows 2000/XP are significantly better operating systems with much, much better support (even by the community). A lot of applications are dropping support for W98, and I've even seen a number of web developers decide to solely support IE6 (I don't support their decision, but unfortunately it's the sad truth).

If all else fails, try Firefox. It's a great little browser. However, I've never run it on Windows 98 (they claim it is supported), and the problem you are experiencing may not be resolved if it is related to your operating system.

Good luck.
posted by purephase at 7:16 AM on January 6, 2005

Actually, this occurs in both Internet Explorer and Firefox. In both of them, for the first few times it occurs, it just says I have an illegal operation (via a pop-up that tells me such), and then after, say, the third time all of the text on my desktop (as well as any pop-ups or anything, really) disappears.

The same error doesn't occur off of the Internet. It doesn't affect anything when I load up Wingdings or any others onto a Word document. It only happens whenever I used Internet Explorer (back when I used Internet Explorer) or Mozilla Firefox.
posted by GirlFriday at 7:30 AM on January 6, 2005

Also: Other computers running Windows 98 that I've tested this on don't experience the same difficulty.

My computer is completely clean.
posted by GirlFriday at 7:32 AM on January 6, 2005

In the illegal operation dialog, do you have a details options? If so, could you post the information from the dialog here? It should be something like:

Invalid page fault in (or similar). This may help in trying to figure out the root of the problem. It sounds like a corrupt or unregistered dll on the machine.
posted by purephase at 10:10 AM on January 6, 2005

Here you go, purephase:

FIREFOX caused a general protection fault
in module SH.DRV at 0002:00004fa6.
Registers:
EAX=ffffffff CS=0377 EIP=00004fa6 EFLGS=00000206
EBX=0000007c SS=57cf ESP=0000ae6a EBP=0000aeb8
ECX=0000c0c9 DS=039f ESI=000051d4 FS=5cf6
EDX=017f039f ES=0c5f EDI=00020000 GS=1ede
Bytes at CS:EIP:
f3 67 66 ab eb 3d 81 ef a0 81 c1 ef 02 66 a3 88
Stack dump:
00005186 0000af52 003f011d 004d0180 00182800 00182800 aed02000 0000072c 01f81bc0 18460afe 00004208 40ffffff 00050800 00000c9e 00020000 00000002
posted by GirlFriday at 11:17 AM on January 6, 2005

According to this list, SH.DRV is a file associated with a specific vendor's video card (Number Nine, Revolution 9).

Unfortunately, it looks like they're out of business, so finding an updated driver is most likely impossible. However, according to this link in Google cache off Zone Alarm's website, the following fix may work:

- Change your display driver settings to slow down the hardware acceleration for that driver. This can usually be done without causing any loss of performance for that driver. To do this, go to Windows display properties, Settings, Advanced, Performance. Then set hardware acceleration to the second notch from the left.

- This particular error was caused by the display driver from Number Nine Visual Technology. Since they are out of business there are no updates available for the driver. You can avoid the problem by making the display driver performance adjustments noted previously.

Open your device manager and check what type of video card you're running. I found a few other links that seem to indicate that is a driver issue, and hopefully the hardware deceleration tip mentioned above might help (although, I'm not sure why).

Keep me posted.
posted by purephase at 1:21 PM on January 6, 2005

purephase, when I write out my will I'm making sure to leave you something special.

Thanks so much for you help!
posted by GirlFriday at 4:34 PM on January 6, 2005