Force Opera to clean up and close...

Force Opera to clean up and close...

Hi,

Opera seems to have an ongoing intermittent problem with releasing resources/cleaning up after itself (or more likely after poorly written JavaScript) and closing. This problem seems to be happening more often in the last couple iterations of the browser.

I will close Opera (try to anyway) and I won't hear the clicking sound I have associated (system-wide) with the close command. I will then open the Task Manager and sure enough, Opera.exe is still there. Sometimes it is in the process of slowly releasing memory - on other occasions it won't be doing a thing - often, hours later it will still have 500 Mbs of memory tied up. I kill the process manually on these occasions.

My wish then is that you do something to remedy this. I kill the process manually anyway so why not just have opera do it? I realize that this is more complicated then I make it sound. But surely there are ways to determine if Opera is doing some truly important behind the scenes work or if the problem is just poorly written garbage JavaScript from some half-baked site.

When I come back to my machine and Opera won't start and I am presented with the option to force a start - that seems backwards to me. It won't start because it hasn't shut down from the last use. Why not "force" it to shut down when I actually choose that command?

Opera 11.62 on WinXP SP3 all fully updated and well-maintained.

Thanks for your consideration.

+1

this begin around version 10, turn into a serious problem on 10.5, it never get fixed along with a few other memory related problems.

Anyone know how to make opera clean up history and all upon exit (as firefox has this option)? Thank you in advance.

Also been noticing this ever since I upgraded to v11.01

Opera always takes between 20 and 60 seconds to close when it is barely using 400MB memory. In comparison, Chrome closes instantly (okay, 1/3 of a second) when it is using 1.5GB memory.

Originally posted by BiggestJim:

Why not "force" it to shut down when I actually choose that command?

That's exactly what happens.

And the rest of you people, quit hijacking the thread!

Originally posted by Slamdex:

Originally posted by BiggestJim:

Why not "force" it to shut down when I actually choose that command?

That's exactly what happens.

By "choose that command" I mean exiting Opera - closing it - either by using the X on the title bar or by using the Exit command in the File menu or by using Alt+F4 - not using the force start option provided when I try to start Opera and it hasn't shutdown from previous use.

Opera should shut down when you choose Exit, though it can take a few seconds (up to a minute on really slow computers) to save its settings and history and so on. If it's not, something strange is happening ...

Originally posted by sgunhouse:

Opera should shut down when you choose Exit, though it can take a few seconds (up to a minute on really slow computers) to save its settings and history and so on. If it's not, something strange is happening ...

Strange as it may be, this seems to be a common plague. As others have noted, it's been occurring for quite some time, and apparently Opera has acknowledged the problem by creating the "force close" dialog window. On my computer, which is indeed a bit old and only has 1 GB of ram, the problem surfaces regularly. It happens particularly often when I leave Opera open for a while with numerous (10+) tabs open before trying to close it.

Well for me it worked to exit Opera from system tray. Another way to do it is to enable "Confirm exit" option in menu, and then choose exit when you want to close Opera (by X in top right corner). The last thing I've noticed... When I have Opera Unite enabled X only hides Opera. When I disable Opera Unite Opera closes properly and after 5-7 seconds there is no opera.exe in the process list.

Originally posted by kanstisama:

Well for me it worked to exit Opera from system tray. Another way to do it is to enable "Confirm exit" option in menu, and then choose exit when you want to close Opera (by X in top right corner). The last thing I've noticed... When I have Opera Unite enabled X only hides Opera. When I disable Opera Unite Opera closes properly and after 5-7 seconds there is no opera.exe in the process list.

Never even noticed this option...I have been using opera for years on windows and now on mac and have tried so many things from changing the cache settings to reinstalling, different versions, trying without extensions, disabling plugins, etc.. Saw this post and thought "yet another 'fix'." Lo and behold, at least for the time being it worked much to my bewilderment. Why I am curious does this have any effect. Loaded up 3 windows full of tabs until the memory reached 1.3 gb. At this point Opera exhibits a strange behavior in which it doesn't let go completely of the memory. For some reason when I first launch opera from a clean page it starts at 130mb and after about 6 tabs in reaches 700mb. At more than 10 tabs it reaches 1gb+. But when it releases memory it only goes down to 850mb. Then if I tried to shutdown, I would have to force quit. But so far with "confirm exit", it quits within seconds. We'll see...fingers crossed. Thanks for the tip!

Update: doesn't work...same behavior after a while....some file must be getting corrupted because after a fresh install it's fine but acts up after some usage.

I have noticed in the java console that when closing a bunch of errors occur with javascript....disabled javascript before closing and so far knock on wood the problem seems to be diminished...