I'm using Windows 98 and Limewire 4.0.4. Limewire used to work fine for me but lately I keep getting this error.. Well sometimes I try to open Limewire and nothing happens, but most of the time it opens but soon I get a "Javaw - This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down" popup box and it closes. Sometimes it happens a second after I open it, usually it takes a couple of minutes, and it seems to rarely happen while I'm downloading something, but usually it takes forever to start downloading something because Limewire closes before I can even do a search for something. Sometimes it just closes without any error message, and sometimes it keeps closing as soon as I open it but if I restart my computer, it stays open longer. I tried to install the newest version of Java in case that might help but there was some error and it wouldn't install.

Sounds like you need to uninstall Java 1st before re-installing.

I tried that and I still get all kinds of errors trying to install it, I tried everything it says on the java site too but nothing works, and now i have no java..

It sounds very much like an incompatibility with another program. Norton's products or ZoneAlarm for example are notoriously causing problem of that kind.