opera becomes unresponsive, thrashing disk

opera becomes unresponsive, thrashing disk

I have an older laptop that I use sometimes (1.6ghz max, 512mb ram, and I'm assuming a rather slow hard drive) that I've installed Opera on, and it's been more usable than any other browser I've tried. For the most part anyway. Occasionally the disk use led comes on continuously and Opera (and the whole system, really) becomes unresponsive. It doesn't seem to be swapping since task manager (once I get it to come up) shows Opera only using about 50mb of ram, and once I end the Opera task the system returns to normal. I have a hunch that the problem is Opera not managing its cache particularly intelligently - on my main linux system Opera never seems to limit the disk cache regardless of the setting and only seems to clean it either on exit or startup. It's possible that on this computer it at least tries to cleanup the cache, but doing so only occasionally and rendering it unusable in the process. Has anyone had a similar experience, and was there anything that could be done to prevent it? Or does anyone think turning off the disk cache would help? It's only at 20mb now, which is I guess the default, and I'd rather not turn it off entirely because the laptop only has the most basic 54mbps wireless.

What version of Windows and Opera are involved? How much free disk space shows up on the drive with Opera not running?
Also, when the problem appears, are you visiting a Flash-equipped site at the time and using Flash?

11.64 on XP, plenty of free space (23 gb on a 60 gb drive).

eh, I remember once it happened after watching like three short youtube videos then closing that tab, I can't remember the exact circumstances the other times but they may have been similar. Usually youtube doesn't cause any problems, though.

I've seen a number of threads in these forums involving 11.64 (and sometimes Flash) wherein Opera seems to soar in memory consumption and/or processor time consumption. From observing Adobe's forums, I know there have been some complaints about Flash itself over the last year or so that involve sporadic memory and/or CPU consumption as well. Also, there have been reports of either software not shutting off after usage and remaining running, which may (or may not) be related to the consumption issues somehow. Whether any of this ties into your disk thrashing is hard to say. You certainly seem to have adequate drive space, so that shouldn't be a problem. Memory is a bit low by today's standards, but that of itself shouldn't be an issue for legacy-respecting software like Opera.

I'm inclined to focus on the cache behavior as well, since something could be triggering a lot of read/write activity there, intentionally or in error. Little else that Opera does with files should have the potential to cause so much disk/file activity. The question is whether it's inherent to an Opera installation on that system or whether something's wrong with your particular installation (either Opera and/or even Flash). Since Flash triggers a fair amount of caching (even on its own), it also must remain a suspect until otherwise exonerated.

When the problem's occurring, have you tried clearing Opera's cache manually to see if the thrashing is affected? (CTRL+F12 > Advanced > History > Disk Cache > Empty Now).

ok, to make things even more confusing, soon after viewing a pdf I got a near-steady disk light and opera remained usable, if a bit slow to respond. I tried emptying the cache, and... the disk activity continued. I closed opera normally and the disk activity eventually stopped, but opera stayed stuck in the task manager. So it could be plugin related, who knows.

Just a thought... have you checked the fragmentation on the hard drive for the XP system? If it's old, was used a fair amount, and defragmentation was not routinely done, then the storage space could be broken up into a bazillion small fragments. This would mean a lot of thrashing back and forth as the disk head attempts to write a large-ish cache file into a myriad of small spaces.

In Windows: Start > All programs > Accessories > System tools > Disk defragmenter > select the drive letter > click the Analyze option. This should give you an indication of whether or not the drive needs defragmentation. To actually defragment, click that option (and if it's badly fragmented, it will take a good while to make it right).

I'm not really sure this is your problem, but it does bear checking out.

Yep,Definitely worth checking for disk fragmentation. Symptoms seem to point to this being a possibility.

huh, I hadn't even thought of that. I'll give it a shot, thanks.

Well, I haven't had the same problem since defragging, and I fixed my main system so I probably won't be testing much anytime soon. Sometimes something would hit the disk, and sometimes Opera would be slow to respond, but nothing like I was having before, so that may have in fact fixed it.

Yay!!!, Good to hear.

Good news!