I do not know that I did, but I seriously messed up my computer. I thought I had a virus, but upon running Norton Anit Virus, I found out I did not.

My problem is that everytime I go to run a program, such as my Sims Game, I won't let me. Like for instance I click the icon on my desktop to go play my game. Last night, I tried to play it, and everytime the intro. would load and then bump me back out into windows. Today, I click and click and the intro. page won't even load.

So, I decided to reinstall windows. Not reformat, just reinstall it over my exsisting program. Well, it kept performing an illegal operation. I tried like 5 times and everytime it did that. I even went into DOS and set it up so it would load on the D: drive instead of the A:. Still would not work.

That is when I ran Norton System Works(anti virus) off of the CD. That told me there were no viruses.

I thought well, great. Now I have to reformat! *again* (just did like 5 days ago) So, I was planning on doing that tomorrow. So, in the meantime, I thought I would play something else on my computer. I tried to install my 'Who wants to be a millionaire' software to play that game, and *surprise* it performed an illegal operation! Several times I tried, and several times it did.

I was hoping there may be a soultion without my having to reformat my computer. My dad seems to think a file may have been deleted. The only things I have recently deleted off my computer in the last couple of days were RealPlayer(constantly performed an illegal operation when not even using it) and ICQ.

Anyone have any idea as to what I may have done or what may have caused it? I am thinking a hardware conflict. Could this be maybe the fact that I have to upgrade my system? I recently figured out that, that is why both of my CDRW won't work(burn/copy)

I do realise that the given info. may be to vague, but any help/suggestions are great Thanx very much in advance!

I had a similar problem, although there's no way of knowing if it's the same cause as yours.

In addition to some of yours, I really only had two regular symptoms: my processor would just start running for no apparent reason (when no files were open); we could here it from the sofa while watching our favorite detectives fish out clues to random murders. Then after running for awhile, we'd get the blue screen of death. We'd have to reboot to get out of it.

The other symptom was similar. Applications were slow, and sometimes we would just get booted out or get the infamous blue screen and have to reboot.

What I realized was that there must have been some applications running in the background, perhaps searching for missing files from some incomplete downloads I had made from software a buddy gave me.

First, I reloaded from the recovery disks, then I wiped the hard drive and performed a full reload. Each time I also reloaded all other software, including my buddy's. It dawn on me until the second time I reformatted my hard drive that the problems didn't come back until I got around to reloading this stuff he gave me. When I got rid of it, the problems went away.

Yes, this stuff interfered with other unrelated applications. I lost some great Diablo characters with that mess! Had to start all over! Pissed me right off!

Esencia, this sounds like a damaged display or sound driver, or a file mismatch in DirectX. Click Start, Run, type "DXDiag" and press Enter. The program will analyse the sofware components, and you can view the reports by clicking the tabs.

The usual culprits are DirectX Files, Sound, Music, and Input. If missing or mismatched DirectX files are indicated, reinstall DirectX.

If Sound or Music, reinstall the soundcard driver. For Input, reinstall the appropriate drivers. The easiest way to do this is to restart the computer in Safe Mode (repeatedly tap F5 after the self-test beep). Right-click My Computer and click Properties, then click the Device Manageer tab.

To reinstall the display driver, double-click Display Adapters, then click the listed adapter, Remove, and OK.

To reinstall the sound driver, double-click "Sound, video, and game controllers", then click the soundcard, Remove, and OK. Ths is also where the game controller can be removed.

If DXDiag reports bad Registry entries, run Microsoft's Registry Cleaner.