From: Ernie on 12/14/2001
: Operating Systems - Windows 98
: Sony Vaio F-350
: Everytime I open a browser whether it's in explorer or netscape. Even if I open AOL it's fine until I try to access the web. Everytime I get an "illegal operation error."
: We have tried so many things - any help??
Bobbie, the owner of my company reported this problem to me recently. The 'illegal operation' error was followed by another message referencing a dll file.
The CSLSP.DLL file to be exact. After checking Microsoft's library and determining that the dll file was not one of theirs, I instructed him to try to determine which application it belonged to. I suggested that he do a Find on the dll file and view its properties via 'right clicking' on file name. Sometimes (not always), the properties window will identify the contributor (In his case it was Mcafree Antivirus). At worst, you may be able to look at when the file was last modified to determine what you may have recently installed. He uninstalled McAfree and reported that the AOL problem went away. I suggested that he re-install McAfree again, as crazy as it may seem. Since he updated AOL to 7.0, McAfree may have been safe-guarding certain system files and was mis-handling the call to the dll file. It's possible that after he re-installs McAfree it will register the new file correctly and he'll be capable of running both applications w/o problems. When downloading updates from trusted vendors (ie-Microsoft, AOL, Symantec, etc.) for application updates, it's always best to disable any antivirus software on your system. Just be sure to renable it after you have completed the update process. This can save you from having to do a uninstall/re-install of the antivirus package. Hope this helps resolve your issue.