norbert preining has reported a problem in the use of the sauter-style ulasy.fd file with the amsmath package. the problem that is encountered is related to the fact that quite a bit of math font loading must occur the first time math mode is entered. math font loading is rather complicated. i'm not sure of the exact cause of the error being reported (and the ams-latex developer is out of the office until next week), but there's a simple workaround. if you force math mode to be initialized in a less involved environment, the error very nicely goes away. this is what i did: \documentclass{article} \usepackage{latexsym} \usepackage{amsmath} \begin{document} $ $% force initialization of math mode \begin{multline*} x \end{multline*} \end{document} this may be a bit inconvenient, but you can most likely find a place early in your document where it shouldn't have any real side effects. i have put the report onto our queue for investigation when time permits. Barbara Beeton Technical Support Electronic Products and Services American Mathematical Society Phone: 800-321-4AMS (321-4267) or 401-455-4080 Internet: [log in to unmask]