Opera has become impossible to use. Crashes or freezes non-stop.

I've been using Opera as my web browser for as long as I can remember and it's always been my favorite. What I above all like about it is the ability to keep a lot of tabs open and that when I close the browser it will load whatever tabs I had open the next time I start it up. With the upgrades that have been released this year this has gotten more and more problematic. With each upgrade Opera crashes and freezes more easily and since I installed Opera 11.60 (which the browser did on its own, I didn't get the option to decide whether or not I wanted it to) it's become impossible to surf the way I want to and the way I'm used to.

There are tons of problems so I'll go over as many as I can remember, one by one. English is not my first language but I'll do my best to describe the problems. As I said above I like keeping a lot of tabs open and it used to be that I could have over 150 going at once without any problems. 150 is on the extreme side, sure, but with 11.60 I'm experiencing as many problems with 15 tabs going. And at the end of the day, the ability to keep a large amount of tabs open is the reason why I've preferred Opera. But, on to the problems.

* When I have lots of tabs going the tab menu sometimes goes crazy. Instead of showing 70 tabs or so it will show about ten tabs, I can't click on any of them and the only thing to do is close the browser and start over. Usually this involves opening the task manager and closing Opera there too, and Opera is often drinking between 700 000 and 16 000 000 kb at that point.

* When I have lots of tabs going the browser sometimes refuses to let me do anything but view the tabs. I can't close a tab, I can't log on to anything or write any messages, I can just view the tabs. When this happens I have to close the browser and start over (see above).

* Opera crashes over nothing. Very often it's enough to try and write a tweet, or write a message at a web forum, or simply click on a link. The browser will crash and give me the "Opera had to be restarted" error message.

* Opera crashes automatically when loading. This usually happens when I first start up the browser. It will go through about five or six "Opera had to be restarted" before I can actually do anything. This can also happen if I've been running the browser for more than five hours. It will crash non-stop until I log off from my Windows user and log back on.

* Opera 11.60 does all of the above with less than twenty tabs open.

* Since installing 11.60 I haven't been able to run other programs simultaneously with Opera. If I for example have a Word document open and then click on the Opera tab the browser crashes. Every single time.


I've really enjoyed using Opera as my browser and I want to keep using it but the way it's running now it's simply impossible. I can understand that it might not be able to handle 150+ tabs but I should at least be able to keep 20 tabs going at once. I tried uninstalling the browser and reinstalling it but it actually only got worse when I did that, with the exception of closing down properly (since I reinstalled I haven't had to go to the task manager). I use Windows XP but other than that I'm not too sure about my specs. If those are needed I could look into it.

Is it possible to install older versions of Opera instead of the later upgrades? I would love to go back to using the versions that allowed me to surf with multiple tabs without constant crashing.

alkalos like you I have used Opera for some time. In the very early days I put up with a few bugs all in the interest of supporting diversity. However of late the crashes have increased. And today I installed the latest and have lost my set up, all links open in new tabs, and option setting is causing issues.

I had hoped that sufficient time had gone by to create a stable, intuitive product. Be interested in hearing any comments relating to your issues, especially as today's scalable architectures should not bat an eye lid at 150 tabs unless you have run out of all forms on memory - but sadly its back to Mozilla for me until quality improves.