roll back ver 11.52 to 10.10?

somewhere along the line my much loved opera switched itself to auto update. I know how to turn that off in security. Hence I ended up with ver 11.52 and could no longer search ebay among other things. This is on an old laptop running XP Pro SP3. I would like to roll it back to ver 10.10 which worked great for me. I have the exe file. First I uninstalled opera, then cleaned every mention I could find on the drive (including registry) using JV16. After installing ver 10.10 I was surprised to see all my configuration and bookmarks intact (?) The bad part is that the browser will not load any pages. Zippo. I've repeated this process now a half dozen times w/o success. The only way I could get back online was to reinstall ver 11.52. Any suggestions how to proceed? When I searched opera help for "version rollback" I came up with zero results. Thanks.

Ask how to fix the problems you have with 11.52, or 11.60 which is due out any day now.

Thanks Pesala, but not sure what you mean. I changed my title to be more specific. I am certainly not interested in trying 11.60 unless it's a last resort. Like I said, ver 10.10 worked great for me and I simply want to reinstall it on my laptop and have it work without interference from newer version's hidden files.

If your re-install of 10.10 "came up" with previous bookmarks and settings intact, then you did not remove every trace of Opera - particularly the profile files in Opera's user folder(s). Keep in mind that Opera does not itself remove those files when you simply uninstall Opera, in case you should ever want to re-install Opera and retrieve your old settings and personal data. If you want those files removed, you must do it manually (and it appears your use of JV16 did not accomplish that either). It is also possible that while using JV16 you removed a key system file needed by Opera with the result that subsequent Opera installs fail to work, though that is not necessarily the case.

If your 10.10 version executable is the "classic" installer, try installing that version into a differently-named folder than that prompted by the installer... such as ***\Opera10 instead of ***\Opera. (If you need the classic installer for old Opera versions and Windows, you can get them from Opera at Download Opera Browser; click the version number, then click "More options" and select the "Classic installer" from the download list. ) Defining a non-default installation folder other than the default prompted one ought to tell the installer to make a completely new and independent Opera installation in the folder you provided and not look elsewhere for any old profile/personal files... it should create new, empty ones. This is the time-honored technique used by many Opera users to install and run multiple different Opera version on the same system.

After you've installed it, be sure to go into Preferences > Advanced > Security and set Auto-update to "Do not check for updates", then click OK. This should block the installation from self-updating in the future, provided that you don't manually check for updates using Help > Check for Updates. In that case, a manual update check will cause certain older Opera versions to automatically checkmark a box on that panel to automatically update Opera in the future - be sure such a box is unchecked before exiting that panel or at various intervals, Opera will auto-check again for updates by over-riding your Preferences setting.

Finally, be aware that by reverting back so many versions in Opera, you will be re-activating a number of Opera security vulnerabilities that were patched in a variety of later versions. Opera patches its software by updating version numbers, not by auto-importing just the patch code to older versions.

thanks blackbird71. I'll give that a try. I did manaully delete the entire opera folder under Program Files (after uninstalling from Contro Panel) many times. But my preferences kept getting reinstalled and I found this somewhat boggling. I may indeed not have the "classic" installer version of 10.10. Will find out.

Eureka! That did the trick. Now I recall having an opera 10 folder on one of my desktops. Is there anyway to import all my configuration and preferences? I am running the same version 10.10 on a desktop.

Originally posted by bonjonno:

... Now I recall having an opera 10 folder on one of my desktops. Is there anyway to import all my configuration and preferences? I am running the same version 10.10 on a desktop.

If you navigate to the desktop's Opera folder using Explorer, you should be able to zero in on the file(s) you want. However, some words of caution are in order here. Opera 10.10 stored much of its user preferences and configuration information in the opera6.ini or operaprefs.ini file (I don't recall which name was used in 10.10, though operaprefs was in use by version 10.63) - but the Opera file paths specified in the prefs file are coded to direct Opera to the folder where that Opera instance had been installed into - so copying it to an Opera instance installed into a different-named folder is a recipe for serious problems - all the paths would be wrong. If you've got the stomach for it, you could manually copy pieces of the desktop prefs file into the new install's prefs file, a little at a time, correcting for path information to point to the new folder as necessary. Also do be aware that if at least part of the problem with the old Opera installation was due to something corrupted or incorrect in the prefs file, then that could get "imported" into the new installation if you were to replicate it there.

Personally, if it were me, I'd consider starting all over in the new installation and add your preferences through the Tools > Preferences panels... while it involves some work, it's not likely to require as much as manually tweaking the old prefs file as noted above - and would be a lot less risky of making errors.

Otherwise, things like bookmarks.adr, notes, eMails, custom skins, keyboard/toolbar settings files etc. should be able to be copied directly over from the old installation folder to the new with no real problems. Just make sure they go into the appropriately-named subfolders in that new Opera folder that they were in before (if any).

Thanks again blackbird71 for ur thourough reply. I tried first to copy the entire profiles folder over from my desktop, but it had no effect. Then I tried migrating a few preference files I found in Documents and Settings/User/ApplicationData/Opera10. Also didn't work. I reverted to the original files. After reading ur post I'm thinking I'll just redo everything from scratch to make sure it works right. Thanks for the help.