[noguru]

Your are most welcome! But I start to wonder if it has been real help because I find this opera 9.50 totally useless after playing with it for a few days.

It eats up all my GDI resources. When I have 5 tabs open it's below 60% already and with every new tab I open, even after closing others, it's gets lower and lower until it's 0%. It doesn't free any resources while it's running. And then everything stops. .. bang boom crash. The only thing not locked-out is the reset button.
I tried to lower resource use by using the native Windows skin and disabling favicons and not opening pages that contain Flash items. But it's no help at all. The only way I can run this is to have some resource meter open all the time and close/re-open Opera before it's too late.

Maxthon+IE6 SP1 rarely gets below 70%. With Opera 9.27 I never had such problems and I used a non-native skin and had favicons enabled.

Anyone else who can confirm this?

[Multibooter]

Sfor, on May 14 2008, 09:26 AM, said:

I found Opera to be a very good internet browser. Still, there is a problem related with opening links using DDE with both Opera 9.2x and the newest 9.5x betas.

While trying to open Opera through running .URL file or clicking on an Internet link in a third party application, Opera displays an error message saying "it can not locate the file or it's component" (translation from Polish), then the browser is starting without the clicked link oppened.

The exact English error msg is: "Cannot find the file xxx.url (or one of its components). Make sure the path and filename are correct and that all required libraries are available." The exact msg text may be helpful for internet searches.

I first encountered this problem in Jan.2007 when I installed Opera v9.10 (International_Setup.exe). Before I had been using Opera v7.23 as default browser for 3 years, NO problem with internet shortcuts. The internet-shortcut-bug is rather a bug of recent versions of Opera than of Win98.

In Jan.2007 I considered this bug so serious that I immediately reverted to Opera 7.23. I have one important internet shortcut on my desktop, which is to the configuration of the wireless router. In Jan.2007, when I looked at the internet-shortcut-bug, I got the feeling that this is a major can of worms for Opera, that's possibly why they never fixed it. Here a link to related info from my notes: "Unable to view Internet shortcuts" http://support.microsoft.com/kb/175306 Maybe this link is helpful if somebody wants to delve into this problem. I doubt that the people at Opera will fix it.

In March/May 2008 I installed v9.26/9.27, both still had the internet-shortcut-bug. But it didn't matter anymore since I had set Firefox as the default browser, which is the easiest workaround to Opera's internet-shortcut problem. Setting a browser as the default browser does not necessarily mean that it is your main browser (Opera is still my favorite browser). It just means: open internet shortcuts with it.

If I remember right, this internet-shortcut problem of Opera also occurs when you click on links in the About screen of software packages, e.g. for registering or buying a software package, or for getting Help via the internet, or in eMule for making a TCP/UDP port connection test. Amazing that the people at Opera haven't fixed this one.

[Atmosphere XG]

This is an interesting topic.

I believe I have every version of Opera available and, find 8.5 to be the best for my needs. Its only pitfall is not functioning on one of my E Mail accounts. I’ve tried 9.27 and it seems to work fine however, the extra features are something I’ll never use.

As for version 9.5 Final Version,

It runs faster on my old AMD K6 but, I don’t notice a difference on my Pentium 4. Surprisingly, Alpha 9.5 is the fastest on my Pentium 4. Unfortunately, it had difficulty determining what type of file it was saving when you downloaded PDF files.

Has anyone noticed (Or possibly I just can’t find it) that version 9.5 Series doesn’t offer the opera6 configuration settings?

I’ve never had any problems saving URLs in folders an having Opera retrieve them.

[lightning slinger]

Hi noguru,

Yes I believe your impressions of opera 9.50 are correct as much the same happened to me.

First time everything locked-out I just put it down to a system glitch, although why I did not investigate it at that time I don't know. I have been running 98SE2ME since early 2007 and it has been faultless (thanks MDGX).

Second time I took your advice and had the resouce meter running although I'm not one for having many tabs or windows opened at once, I was alarmed at how quickly the green on the resource meter turns to amber and even more alarmed at how quickly the amber turns to red. Then it's only a matter of time and having to open acrobat 5.1 to view a pdf on one page was the last straw for the PC and as you say only the reset button is available.

I have since reverted to 9.27 and the resource meter usually hovers around the 74% mark after a similiar type of browsing.

As Mijzelf says it,s "blazing fast" but for me the GDI resources problem outweigh that advantage.

I see that 9.51 beta is out, perhaps things will improve given time.

This post has been edited by lightning slinger: 21 June 2008 - 04:16 AM

[jglori]

@noguru

Quote

Your are most welcome! But I start to wonder if it has been real help because I find this opera 9.50 totally useless after playing with it for a few days.

It eats up all my GDI resources. realmad.gif When I have 5 tabs open it's below 60% already and with every new tab I open, even after closing others, it's gets lower and lower until it's 0%. It doesn't free any resources while it's running. And then everything stops. .. bang boom crash. The only thing not locked-out is the reset button.
I tried to lower resource use by using the native Windows skin and disabling favicons and not opening pages that contain Flash items. But it's no help at all. The only way I can run this is to have some resource meter open all the time and close/re-open Opera before it's too late.

Maxthon+IE6 SP1 rarely gets below 70%. With Opera 9.27 I never had such problems and I used a non-native skin and had favicons enabled.

Anyone else who can confirm this?

Now that you mentioned it, I tried observing Opera 9.5 and I did observe the same thing. Too bad, I really liked Opera since it was supposed to be "light" on resources. And perhaps its older versions were as they said they were. Now, I just don't know if this latest version is just too much for Win98SE to handle. Anyway, I switched to Firefox 2.0.0.14 for the meantime. If this issue about Opera clears-up then I'm going back to it.

This post has been edited by jglori: 21 June 2008 - 08:44 AM

[noguru]

Thanks for the response people. Good to know that I'm not alone, saves me from more pointless troubleshooting.
I didn't find this particular problem on the opera forums but a lot of general complaints about instability, (very) high memeory usage and frequent crashes. It seems that Opera 9.50 has some serious issues. The latest beta claims to have fixed the GDI leaking transfer-screen. During downloading Opera can hang and freeze the system. But that's just one of the problems.

[Dave-H]

I'm a great fan of Opera, and have used version 9.xx ever since it came out, with 9.27 the latest version of course.
My only problem is that it is very slow to start up and close down on Windows 98. It's much better on Windows 2000 (dual boot machine.)
Apart from that it works very well, and does everything I want it too in a way that I'm very happy with.

Unfortunately, IMO 9.50 was rushed out much too quickly, with a lot of serious, and known, bugs still in it.
For me the killer was that it doesn't work properly with Quicktime plugins, a serious issue for me as I regularly use several Quicktime sites.

I tried 9.50 and backed off back to 9.27 pretty quickly!

[Multibooter]

ElectricString, on Jun 13 2008, 05:52 AM, said:

SFOR
Get this 'Maximus Decim Cumulative Update ver.3.00 for Windows 98SE'

msimg32.dll from MDCU v3.05 works fine for Opera v9.60 under Win98SE, BUT: it is NOT the same as msimg32.dll in Win_12.CAB on the US WinME CD. Any idea why??

msimg32.dll on the German WinME CD also differs from the one on the US CD, but works fine with Opera v9.60 under US Win98SE. So I would guess that any language version of WinME msimg32.dll works fine with Opera v9.60 under any language Win98SE opsys.

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Multibooter, on Oct 17 2008, 02:29 PM, said:

ElectricString, on Jun 13 2008, 05:52 AM, said:

SFOR
Get this 'Maximus Decim Cumulative Update ver.3.00 for Windows 98SE'

msimg32.dll from MDCU v3.05 works fine for Opera v9.60 under Win98SE, BUT: it is NOT the same as msimg32.dll in Win_12.CAB on the US WinME CD. Any idea why??

msimg32.dll on the German WinME CD also differs from the one on the US CD, but works fine with Opera v9.60 under US Win98SE. So I would guess that any language version of WinME msimg32.dll works fine with Opera v9.60 under any language Win98SE opsys.

Ya know, I was wondering the exact same thing! Couldn't find anything within the MDCU distro mentioning the probable patch that someone applied to the WinME version of MSIMG32.DLL. I wonder if this a functional improvement or just a versioning tattoo.

FYI: A few months ago I had to sort out a problem with this file for someone (Win9x/MSIE6/AOL90 conflicts) and audited all the versions I could locate. Here is what I experimented with ...

 
Msimg32.dll 53,248  05-11-98  8:01p v5.00.16931 Win98(Cd) AcroRead Satsc185
Msimg32.dll 53,248  04-23-99 10:22p v5.00.16931 Win98se(Cd)
Msimg32.dll  5,392  11-30-99 11:39p v5.00.21801 Win2k(Sp4)(Cd)
Msimg32.dll  5,392  03-23-00  3:00a v5.00.21801 CodeLobster
Msimg32.dll 53,248  06-08-00  5:00p v5.00.22181 MDCU305e <--- NOT identical to WinME
[color="#FF0000"]Msimg32.dll 53,248  06-08-00  5:00p v5.00.22181 WinME(Cd) <--- works fine in Win9x Opera 9.60[/color]
Msimg32.dll  4,608  08-17-01 10:36p v5.1.2600.0000 WinXP(Sp0)(Cd)
Msimg32.dll  4,608  08-29-02  3:41a v5.1.2600.1106 WinXP(Sp1)(Cd) Symantec-Recovery-Disc
Msimg32.dll  4,608  08-04-04 12:56a v5.1.2600.2180 WinXP(Sp2)(Cd) Emsa-HtmlRem
Msimg32.dll  4,608  04-14-08  5:42a v5.1.2600.5512 WinXP(Sp3)(Cd) 

The WinME distribution file (from Win_12.cab) marked with red was the one needed on that Win9x computer and I have not heard of any problem since. The problem was that AOL supplied multiple versions of the DUN and other system files in their Program Files directory structure which somehow got mingled by the PPP setup INF. Also, FWIW, notice that the NT versions of that file are apparently a stub of some kind anyway and of no value under Win9x.

FYI, on my main Win9x boxes I have the latest Opera v9.60.10447 and Java JRE 1.6. The WinME file is in use here and it is located in Windows\System and so far works without problems (in fact I think there are speed improvements over the 9.5x releases). I have multiple versions of Opera and cannot remember ever having to localize any Win9x system files in any of their folders.

[Multibooter]

CharlotteTheHarlot, on Oct 17 2008, 04:56 PM, said:

Ya know, I was wondering the exact same thing! Couldn't find anything within the MDCU distro mentioning the probable patch that someone applied to the WinME version of MSIMG32.DLL. I wonder if this a functional improvement or just a versioning tattoo.

I initially thought it was a security issue, but then msimg32.dll on the German WinME CD had the identical size and version info under Beyond Compare/Version Viewer, but differed substantially under Beyond Compare/Hex Viewer. So MS just localized the file content, not its version info. Possibly Maximus Decim may have picked up a file from a non-US version of WinME, or from a beta.

[Sfor]

I've upgraded Opera from 9.2x to 9.60.

The problems with oppening .URL links remained unchanged.

When comared to the 9.2 the 9.60 does have worse readablity, because almost all icons are just in shades of gray. I do not know how to make them coloured, at the moment.

[Dave-H]

Sfor, on Oct 18 2008, 10:53 AM, said:

I've upgraded Opera from 9.2x to 9.60.

The problems with oppening .URL links remained unchanged.

When comared to the 9.2 the 9.60 does have worse readablity, because almost all icons are just in shades of gray. I do not know how to make them coloured, at the moment.

Have you tried just using different skins?

[Multibooter]

Sfor, on Oct 18 2008, 02:53 AM, said:

I've upgraded Opera from 9.2x to 9.60.

The problems with oppening .URL links remained unchanged.

When comared to the 9.2 the 9.60 does have worse readablity, because almost all icons are just in shades of gray. I do not know how to make them coloured, at the moment.

The internet-shortcut-bug is still there in Opera v9.60 (under Win98SE US version). The work-around is to have Opera already loaded before double-clicking on the internet shortcut on the desktop. Opera has removed the URL-selection under Preferences-Advanced-Details, maybe the people at Opera were working to fix this bug? I have set Opera back as my default browser, since the work-around solves the problem, even though in an inconvenient way.

Re colored icons: The grey icons actually help you focus on the content of the web page you're reading, instead of on the browser controls. When I weigh improved readability of the page content vs more visible browser controls, I would go for improved readability.

[Sfor]

I do prefer the way it was done in the 9.2. The icons were in dimmed colours. So, the menus were more readable, and still not disturbing. Grey is good for the tool bar. But, in the menu coloured icons are much better.

Yet another problem. The Opera 9.60 appears to loose entries from the download list, between sessions. The sort order is distorted, as well.

Right after installation, it appears, there are no skins with coloured icons in the installation package.

I do prefer the Opera 9.2. So, I've unistalled the 9.60, as it appears to bring less good than bad.

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Some impressions of Opera 9.60 ...

POSITIVE :: I am now thoroughly convinced there is a speedup over 9.5x in all parts of the Opera GUI. This includes the Preferences and Skin dialogs (which were slower in 9.5x) and I think everything else. I am using the same JRE 1.6 throughout all the 9.xx revisions so that is not to be factored in, and I can also confirm that no files outside of the Opera directory structure have been altered by any of the 9.xx upgrades. Clearly something that was badly changed in 9.5x has been changed back.

POSITIVE :: File > Save ... Saving MHT and HTM files is back to normal now as well. This was really ticking me off when saving individual webpages took longer than the entire initial Opera/Java loading (which is to be expected to take some time).

POSITIVE :: Wand, Cache, Cookies ... I had seen a real PITA problem in 9.5x concerning forums sign-ins (like this) where every single day when loading several threads from a session, in each of those threads I found myself NOT logged-in and of course had to. In short, Opera was not remembering things that it was supposed to remember. This has not yet happened again to me in Opera 9.60.

NEGATIVE :: Shell\Open and DDE ...

Multibooter, on Oct 18 2008, 09:33 AM, said:

The internet-shortcut-bug is still there in Opera v9.60 (under Win98SE US version). The work-around is to have Opera already loaded before double-clicking on the internet shortcut on the desktop.

Confirmed here, and the same thing happens to me opening any file assigned to Opera (in this case HTM and MHT). Double-clicking them without first having Opera running causes the error. It hasn't bugged me to the point of research yet. I've been dodging this error the exact same way as you and it works. Just open Opera first. But I will be watching this thread hoping you guys come up with more ideas about this.

NEGATIVE :: Transfers ...

Sfor, on Oct 18 2008, 06:43 PM, said:

Yet another problem. The Opera 9.60 appears to loose entries from the download list, between sessions. The sort order is distorted, as well.

I noticed this as well, but I thought it was since the later 8.xx versions. I could have sworn it was present in all the 9.xx versions. It is too sporadic to be reproducible. What would be a nice fix here is to auto append to a log file all the download transactions like GetRight does. I also notice that every so often (perhaps 1% of the time) a file is corrupt even though it successfully downloaded. Having said that, I doubt I have downloaded enough files in 9.60 to be able to state with certainty that the problem is still existing.

NEGATIVE :: MSI Installer ... why they chose to remove the easy option of Classic Installer from the main download page is beyond me. Now you have to click: Show Other Versions, then Windows, then All Languages next to the current version, then you FINALLY get the radio button for the good installer.

Just so that the configuration here is clear: Windows is 4.10.2222, Opera is v9.60.10447, Java is JRE 1.6. The MSIMG32.DLL is in Windows\System and is from the WinME CDROM. Opera is NOT installed using MSI packages.

[Sfor]

The conclusion is the Opera 9.5 introduced some serious speed related core changes. The current 9.6 version is the result of trying to make the new design stable again.

The old 9.2 design is slower but more reliable. It seems to be logical to wait for higher than 9.6 version, before upgrading from 9.2.

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

to Sfor and Multibooter and all others ...
FYI: I did some testing of Opera 9.60 and its recent Shell\Open and/or DDE bug. Wondering if you get the same errors as any of these that I noted? Methodology: Opera was verified to be closed, one file manager was opened, a .MHT test file selected, and [ENTER] was pressed.

Result = whether the MHT file successfully opened into an Opera tab, and,
MsgBox = any message returned complaining about the Shell/Open action ...
;--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
application: Tracker v3.60.0030 ...
result: SUCCESS
msgbox: NONE!
;--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
application: XYplorer v7.00.0000
result: SUCCESS
msgbox: NONE!
;--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
application: nViPER.@bOX v0.0.0.401
result: SUCCESS
msgbox: NONE!
;--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
application: WinNC Next Commander v3.00
result: SUCCESS (NOTE: it opened it in two tabs! verified again)
msgbox: NONE!
;--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
application: Windows Explorer v4.72.3612.1700
result: SUCCESS
msgbox: Cannot find the file "TEST.MHT" (or one of its components). Make sure the path and filename are correct and that all
required libraries are available.
;--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
application: BenniSoft LCARS FileManager v0.11.049
result: SUCCESS
msgbox: Cannot find the file "TEST.MHT" (or one of its components). Make sure the path and filename are correct and that all
required libraries are available.
;--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
application: PowerDesk v6.0.4.2
result: SUCCESS
msgbox: Access to the specified device, path, or file is denied
;--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
application: WinAbility AB Commander v6.6
result: SUCCESS
msgbox: Access to the specified device, path, or file is denied
;--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
application: WinFile Win98se v4.10.1998 and WinME v4.90.3000
result: SUCCESS
msgbox: File Manager cannot find the specified file (or one of its components).
Make sure the path and filename are correct and that all required libraries are available.
;--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
application: Total Commander v6.52
result: SUCCESS
msgbox: File not found!
;--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

All of the file managers actually do work, that is, they do pass the filename to the shell which opens the file as instructed by these registry keys:

 
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Classes\.mht]
@="Opera.MHTML"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Classes\Opera.MHTML\Shell\Open\Command]
@="\"C:\\WinApps\\Opera\\096010447\\Opera.exe\" \"%1\""

;;; here are the DDE entries shown for completeness sake although
;;; I do not believe this branch is called during this test ... 

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Classes\Opera.MHTML\Shell\Open\DDEexec]
@="\"%1\""
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Classes\Opera.MHTML\Shell\Open\DDEexec\Application]
@="Opera"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Classes\Opera.MHTML\Shell\Open\DDEexec\Topic]
@="WWW_OpenURL" 

Since the requested file does get displayed in Opera (note that it opens in two tabs under WinNC), the only real problem is that nuisance MsgBox produced by the caller application in all but four of the tests. Another point, this MsgBox is not spawned from Opera, it is from the calling app. Even though during the Explorer test the MsgBox does not mention Explorer in its title, during the PowerDesk test it clearly mentions PowerDesk Pro.

Several have identical errors indicating they use the same function to pass the filename over to the shell: Windows Explorer and BenniSoft LCARS FileManager. Also PowerDesk and WinAbility AB Commander. And of course both the Win98se and WinME versions of WinFile.

I had hoped a simple patch to the parsing of the Shell\Open\Command string would solve this but I think the variation in results under this test implies that fixing that registry string so that it works for one program (e.g., Explorer) will likely break it for others. But that is still a hunch at this point.

This does not mirror exactly the previous testing in this thread with URL shortcuts, but I figured this would help narrow the list of suspects down by eliminating the HTTP registry keys as variables. But please anyone chime in with ideas about this. I'm just offering up some data at this point and I hope someone else will notice something I missed.

[Dave-H]

If you want the look of Opera 9.2x back in 9.5/6 the shin here should do the trick -

http://my.opera.com/...s/info/?id=8248

It's not the real 9.2 native skin, but one made by someone to replicate it.
Gets rid of those black icons by all accounts though!

I love Opera because it's the most user customisable browser out there, you can get it to look exactly the way you want it to if you know how.

The thing with items disappearing from the transfers window is very long standing.
They do disappear by design incidentally if the item concerned is deleted or moved from the folder it was downloaded to.

[Sfor]

I've been observing items disappearing from the transfers window in the Opera 9.6, when the concerned file remained in the download folder.

I'm aware of the function removing deleted or moved files from the list. In my case the files were removed without apparent reason.

[Dave-H]

There is an option to set the number of days for transfers to be kept in the list, copy and paste this into the address bar:

opera:config#TransferWindow|KeepEntriesDays

The default is 7 days, but I've never been convinced that it makes any difference!

Did you try that skin?

This post has been edited by Dave-H: 20 October 2008 - 04:40 PM