Opera keeps "hanging up" for some seconds.

Opera keeps "hanging up" for some seconds.

(I hope this is the right forum)
For quite some time I've been having this strange problem now......
Every few Minutes - about 2 to 5, my Opera stops responding COMPLETELY for about 4-6 seconds.

Evrything else on the system runs on just fine, only Opera doesnt react.
In case I'm watching a movie on youtube or something, first the screen (and animation)
will freeze, 2 seconds later the sound will freeze after going on normally, then after 3-4 more
seconds, the animation&sound will jump to where it should be when it plays normally.

It is REALLY really annoying after such a long time, and I don't know what could cause
this, does anyone know what it could be?

Thanks

VEclipse

Do you have email or RSS activated ?
Checking for new messages *may* cause similar phenomenon.

Im using M3, but autocheck is deactivated.

I have this same problem, and it's extremely annoying. It freezes for probably 3 seconds though, not 4-6. It's JUST barely not long enough that the sound doesn't cut out on youtube videos. The video hangs, but then catches up when the hang is over. If I'm typing text, it stops showing up until the hang is over. Animated gifs will stop. I've tried uninstalling, resetting profiles, everything.

Do you have a dual cpu machine by any chance? I'm running two xeon processors.

Nah its not the CPU, i have a single AMD processor....

Do you, by any chance have Win2000 proffesional?

So are you saying the problem only occurs when you're playing Youtube videos in Opera? Not if you're playing Youtube videos in IE or whatever? Not when you're doing anything else in Opera?

See this post from neeraj_deshmukh. http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=200024&t=1186686849&page=1#comment2190929

No. No. I don't get it only while watching videos!
It happens all the time.

-bump-

It starts annoying me to death, theres no errors in the console..
But when it hangs up I hear the harddisk doing some activity..

happens to me too. i'm running a 900mhz pent 3, 512mb RAM, XP, and it's been like this since all opera 9.x (only ones i've had) i'm pretty sure.

i've noticed it hangs for 3 seconds 90% after i save an image as. as soon as i click save on the dialogue box, it hangs for 3 seconds or so.

it also hangs at just random times, and when it does, CPU goes to 100%, and fan spins faster. haven't noticed the hard-drive doing anything intensive.

I have EXACTLY the same problem. but i think mine only kicks in when i am scrolling down or up a page or typing something, for example i frequent wikipedia, and when i scroll up and down i sometimes experience the same problem..... it just doesnt seem to work, and then suddenly jumps to where i am supposed to have scrolled to..... i notice that this problem is more frequent in forums, for example TSG forums and even this forum. when i am scrolling here it sometimes hangs up. seems like the time spent hanging is shorter in this forum though. i tried the same pages in the other browsers like firefox, they work. so i think its a opera specific problem.

I have EXACTLY the same prob too!
I never had it that much, right now with 9.50 it's really painful.
I don't use mail or feeds.
Maybe I should check my overclock settings from my ram and cpu...

You might want to change your settings for smooth scrolling in Tools > Preferences > Advanced > Browsing.

Okay, it still freezes, and during that my hdd activity light is burning, not just flashing. So it must have st to do with saving stuff or Idk.

I was getting a lot of this kind of lag. On a hunch I disabled the Opera skins and used "system default" instead. My stuttering/lagging problems seem to be solved now.

Yes, I too am seeing this, both on my 1.5GHz Dell box and my AMD4800+ asus box. Both run WindowsXP. Ever since release 9.x there is some task that completely takes over the program and seizes it up for 3 or 4 seconds. I have tried to improve it in the following ways:
1) Set page rendering to suppress until the page is fully loaded. This way I get the completely rendered page rather than all kinds of flailing about as opera writes to the screen over and over as all the style sheets and such come in.
2) Turn off Java - well anyone that leaves this on is clinically insane anyway-- I really don't need web pages to take over my machine.
3) Turn off java-script. Various pigs such as the Drudge Report use java-script to constantly refresh their pages, even then they are in the background, but this is really annoying when you are using the page and it goes poof so the new page comes in. Setting described in 1) will at least keep the page from poofing, but disabling java-script makes the page not even try to do this. Pigs do this auto-refresh because they get another ad view and more of that filthy lucre, so only expect this behaviour to get worse in the future.
4) Disable pop-ups
5) Disable web animations
6) Disable sounds
7) Disable plug ins
8) Disable referrer logging
9) Disable proxy servers
10) Disable smooth scrolling

And today-- ta-da -- I disabled cookies (which meant I could not log onto this forum, thank you noble Nordic privacy invaders), but then the program froze up again even without cookies. Now at this point one has to abandon the theory that the web pages open in other tabs are stealing resources, I mean, they do take a lot if they are refreshing or running Java-script and I assume you all get the memory leaks and such in TitanTV but remember, I turned that all off and I am still getting seizures. It is a given that Opera was written with no scheduler and no prioritising or they would make page scrolling and clicking the mouse on other tabs, menus, or anything else keep working despite a heavy load. So right now my theory is the bookmark file. I have a very big file and we all have been screwed by bookmarking a ton of sites only to have Opera crash and lose all the bookmarks. That stopped around release 9 (the loss, not the crashing), so I suspect our noble Nordic princes are just auto-writing to the bookmark file every few minutes. If you have a big file, like I do, that just stops the program in its tracks and you get to stab at the screen while nothing works until the little internal Church Lady that is tidying everything up inside the program decides to release the program counter to do silly things like obey the user.

sportsterpaul, I think your hunch may be right. I have a very big bookmarks file, around 1249 bookmarks, as of my last count. My bookmarks file (opera6.adr) is around 327KB now. The same 'hanging' problem happens to me too, every 1-3 minutes.

I have set plugins, Java, mouse gestures, mail and chat to disabled. I also have Opera 9.50 alpha with the same settings and it doesn't happen. My memory cache is set to automatic, disk cache set to 200mb, and history addresses set to 500. I have tried deleting my cache and history but the problem still happens.

I currently use Opera 9.24 (upgraded from previous version using the Classic Installer) on Windows XP.

I kept my big bookmark file but used the Tools>Delete Private Data option and deleting everything but my wand passwords. I set the Tools>Preferences>advanced>history to turn of the memory and disk cache. The 2.8 gig 64 x2 4800+ box does not seem to hang anymore. The poor little Dell 4300 upstairs still goes away for long periods. Software people use the latest machines to develop programs where a law should be passed that they have to use 386s. That Opera got it's claim to fame by being the fasted browser when it now just hangs up and goes away even with all the history and cache files cleared out and java, javascript, plugins and cookies turned off is pretty troubling. I guess I will let it upgrade to the latest upstairs-- what is that 9.54? and clear it out again and see if it stops pausing for a few seconds every now and then. I do admit that eBay is a real bunch of pigs when it comes to using resources. First they were "powered by IBM". Then they were "powered by Sun" then they went back to IBM. Now they are powered by incompetent geek software morons that think bloatware is something to be proud of. I wish the Google folks would go slap eBay upside the head and teach them how to run a relational database. As I noted before TitanTV is also pretty piggish-- and sometimes it is the ads served up that has all kinds of crappy javascipt that brings a 1.5 GHz Pentium 4 to it's knees. I will turn everything off and see if it keeps hanging. Stay tuned.

I recently got a new laptop with Windows Vista Business, previously I was on Windows XP Pro. I got exactly the same problem as described - Opera would just stop working for a few seconds, every few minutes. Intensely frustrating. It didn't matter whether I was scrolling, clicking on a link, clicking on a tab, going for an option in a menu, whatever.

When I first started up Opera on the new laptop I (believed I) imported my opera6.adr contents from the old laptop. This laptop is still on the network while I (slowly) transfer stuff off it. So when my network connection stopped working recently, I saw a message from Opera to say it couldn't find the opera6.adr file on the old laptop. This gave me the clue that I hadn't actually imported, I must have opened the .adr file (I'm SURE I imported though). So, using Bookmarks/Manage Bookmarks/File/Save As I saved the .adr file onto my new laptop so that the file is local, then Opened the file and the problem has gone away.

Hope that helps someone.

Hi,

I have used some sysinternals tools (ProcessExplorer and ProcessMonitor) and I confirm that Opera rewrites the bookmarks file (opera6.adr or other if you changed it) at random(?) interval. My bookmarks file is quite big (1 Mo) and this result in an hangup of a few seconds.

Note that an intermediate tmp file is first created in "C:\Documents and Settings\xxxxxxx\Application Data\Opera\Opera\profile\"
directory and is renamed to opera6.adr.

1. This rewrite occurs even when bookmarks have not been changed and is of no interest.

2. The rewrite occurs line by line. Writes seem to be flushed every line -> not the best way!


Cathim, I don't understand if you have solved the problem and how you really did it ?

Do any of you guys use gmail? Because Opera has never handled gmail very well, in my experience, and I have this hangup issue if I have a gmail tab open. If I close it, I don't have the problem. I was just going to open a new thread (I still might) about gmail problems but then I saw this.

Originally posted by mbrown3:

Do any of you guys use gmail?

No, I don't use Gmail.

The problem is partially corrected in 9.50 beta.
Opera continues to save bookmarks file regularly even if bookmarks have not been changed.
But, instead of writing line by line which is time consuming, the file is written by blocks (1024).
I think that write of bookmarks file has never been correctly handled but the recent flush line by line has revealed the problem.

I use gmail regularly, on the 'weekly' - no problems, unless you want to use what I call pointless fancy features, that add no actual functionality...

BUT this part of the forum is only for *finals* (curr. 9.24) - please go here for the 'weeklies'

MY Opera 9.24 became ever slower and ended up starting to drag the machine to a halt. Also every so often the browser would freeze on me for anything from 3 seconds to a minute though nothing else was affected. This problem has been building up for a long time. Another symptom is the browser has been taking ever longer to start.

I have suspected that writing to the Bookmaks file is the sorce of the problem but never managed to prove it.

My bookmarks file is toooooooooo big 8Mb+ because it dates back almost to the last century (I started on Opera 3.something) and I tend to bookmark too much.

From what I've read her it would seem that my suspicisions were right. My problem is that opera 9.24 now will not open and 9.5 will not import anything from the old address book (or at least in the 90min I gave it it didn't susceed).

I have a bookmarks file of approx 400K. I keep the file on a network drive so I can use it from different computers in the network. Since, I believe since version 9 I experience these iritating freezes. Moving back to a local file on drive C: solved the problem. However this would end sharing my bookmarks over the network. So I moved to Firefox to return to Opera last week. Sadly, the problem is not solved. I would be happy with a backup copy made at startup time. No need for copy activities while browsing. Can`t this be done? I still prefer Opera but for now I will stick with Firefox. Will check later for a fix.

I have probs using gmail in Opera 9.24 for windoze. Usually freezes and I need to close opera via explorer or task manager. It didn't happen before installing 9.24.

@hopless3,
Try cleaning cache, cookies and history: go to Tools --> Delete private data --> details --> now choose the lot but not your passwords of course --> clean and restart Opera. When that doesn't help do the same but close Opera and delete the global.dat in the profile folder and the dcache4.url in the cache4 folder and start Opera.

Also check for mulitple paths for plugins here: Tools --> Advanced --> Plugins. When you see plugins in the Mozilla folder go here and take out the Mozilla path, save settings and restart Opera.

Are you using userjs? Try temporarily disabling it.

When the above doesn't work try the profile reset: http://my.opera.com/neeraj_deshmukh/blog/show.dml/319153 .
To determine whether the size of the bookmarks is playing a role simply rename the opera6.adr to opera6.adr.bak when Opera is not running. Now start Opera and see what is happening. Or let tools like AM Deadlink look for the dead wood in your bookmarks.

@greaterik1.
The 9.5 series provide synchronisation of Bookmarks, Speed Dial and Personal through the Opera servers. That could be an interesting workaround for you.

Every "solution" I've seen in this thread is simply sad. If a person just started using a computer last week and Opera yesterday... then maybe suggesting things like clearing cache's, checking a dozen boxes in preferences and/or possibly reinstalling as a single user would be worth someone's time to spit out here in type. However, the above scenario's odds are about 1:1000. Opera has been majorly F#@%ing up since 9.23 on every windows system I've seen for months now - especially if it's Vista. Bugs were introduced 2 and 3 releases ago that simply haven't been addressed and yet they continue releasing new builds. Why is that? The most commonly used operating system that the browser is used on is getting more and more unusable with every release and yet they seem to be saying "Hey guys, let's release another build without addressing frozen tabs, scrolling that freezes the entire operating system and an exe that sometimes confuses itself itself with all other open processes until the locked up BROWSER has to be closed manually by the user or by the os after the user clicks "close" a thousand times while screaming "I'm soooo dropping this annoying $#!t for Firefox"!!!". That's pretty sad. I just wish they'd come out from their blogs sometimes and read what the average user is dealing with instead of camping out in their little holes, hiding from the greater community and listening only to the suck-ups that've been here since the last millenium acting as some kind of "beta-testers" for the latest build because they have no real life. It seems that that process is skipping some very important trend that's become all to common as of late.

thanks for the help guys but I cannot open 9.24 do do any of the suggestions like cleaning the cache but I am now sure it is the adr file as if I try to copy that to opera 9.5 I get a cyclic redundency error.

I will have to fix the drive using the os utilities.

As to what Inbound says there is a lot of truth behind it but he is exagerating. I personally think that Opera is the better browser I find it much the more intuitive. So I'm sticking with Opera but I do think new bits seem to be more important to them than fixing bugs. The anoying pauses have buged me for some time and I haven't found a solution. That said 9.5 seems far less prone to them.

I think it's settings on Tools - Advanced - History that fixed excess CPU/RAM/HDD usage for me. I've got memory cache set to 60Mb, Disk cache 20Mb (empty on exit), remember 5000 pages, check documents every 24 hours, images every 10 minutes.

It may be the memory and disk cache settings you need to turn down?

Any other person here with a huge bookmarks file that is experiencing this problem?

I have installed the latest version of Opera as of now (9.25) on another computer and the only thing I transferred is the bookmarks file (opera6.adr). My bookmarks file is around 350KB now (1250+ boomarks). The 'hanging up' problem still happens, every 30 seconds - 3 minutes, the computer stalls for about 3-5 seconds.

You big-bookmarks file people: does it help if you make a small alternate file and use that? Can swap between bookmark files - Manage Bookmarks (Alt+Ctrl+b), dropdown file menu: "Save selected as..." to create a small file, "Open" to load it. So maybe turning the big file into an archive loaded only when needed will shorten the freezes.

I highly doubt this issue has to do with the size of the bookmarks file (opera6.adr).

My opera6.adr is 14KB(kilobytes) and today, for instance, I am getting tired of stairing at the wall randomly every 1-5mins for 5secs-2mins. Some days it's fine. Other days horrible. Usually worse with forums and a few tabs open but I have no clue exactly what is causing this.

Tried changing all history/cache setting plus all kinds of other settings. Nothing helps.

I've had this problem in more than one version. Some beta, some final release. Currently 9.50 Beta.

I was also experiencing this issue in Windows XP with Opera 9.25. The several second freeze while typing and scrolling was really getting annoying. In Mandriva Linux 2007.1 with Opera 9.25 I do not experience this issue. The bookmarks file is essentially the same in both - about 183 KB.

In Windows XP, I run Kaspersky Internet Security 7.0. I tried disabling Kaspersky's firewall and using XP's built in firewall instead, but this did not make any appreciable difference, so I went back with Kaspersky's firewall. Next I turned off "Proactive Defense" in Kaspersky Internet Security and the problem has either gone away, or is negligable. Even with Proactive Defense turned off, I still have File Antivirus, Mail Antivirus, Web Antivirus, Firewall, and Anti-Spam. I agree that this is not the ideal solution, but at least I can live with it for now.

FYI, the following was written by Cyber Top Cops at: http://www.cybertopcops.com/review-kaspersky-internet-security.php

Proactive Defence
The Proactive Defence mode is an impressive feature of Kaspersky Internet Security that consists of three components namely the Application Activity Analyser, analysing the actions performed by every application running on your computer; the Application Integrity Control, tracking the integrity of your programs by the composition of the program modules and checksum of the program itself; and the Registry Guard, analysing all attempts made to change keys in the Windows Registry. Novice users should not feel intimidated by these strange terms. The Proactive Defence module is mainly a tool for power users, but is already optimally configured for normal use.

Perhaps others of you are running similar security software?

I run no firewall, and no resident anti-virus or malware programs. I do unfortunately use AOL dialup(version 4 not too bloated) on Win98. So this happens with AOL, Point32, and Opera running alone.

1GHz machine so it's not THAT old.


I think it has nothing to do with the computer and other installed programs. I think it has to do with an Opera setting OR some html/php/jscript(or other) code on some webpage.

I have the same problem with big bookmarks file (102kB). Actually I am running Opera@USB version from external HDD. And here is the catch.
I checked by Sysinternals FileMon what is going on and Opera is reading (and maybe writing) bookmarks file many times. For example when starting Opera bookmarks for every line!!! there are following actions:
- file attribute check
- file open
- file search
- file read
- file close
- file attribute check

So many actions for every line! Why??? This file should be read as a whole into memory and parsed there, not on disk!
If Opera is run from slower drive like mine such reading slows down a lot.

@ Opornik: good info, but I think I see freezes with no action from the "disk activity" light most of the time. (If disk reads of bookmark file were freeze mechanism, a ramdisk could make a big difference: trick Opera into staying in memory. I used one in DOS days; not sure if they work anymore.)

I have found out something that seems to resolve the problem: It seems that using CCleaner ( http://filehippo.com/download_ccleaner ) to remove Opera's Internet Cache and History removes the "hanging up" behaviour.

I have been using Opera for about 10 minutes after doing this, and I haven't noticed the problem yet. I am still using the settings that I have previously used with Opera: opera6.adr bookmarks file - around 350KB(1250+ boomarks). Plugins, Java, mouse gestures, mail and chat are disabled. Memory cache - automatic, disk cache - 400MB, history addresses: 500. Opera info: Version - 9.25, Build - 8827, Windows XP. I will continue to observe and see if it hangs again after some time.

If you have used CCleaner to remove traces of Opera history and cache, please post if this helps with this issue.

I totally agree with Innbound. Ever since 9.23 the browser has gotten "worser and worser". Tabs freeze frequently, the page hangs etc etc etc. And now even YouTube pages don't load properly - the thumbnails go off and on. The appalling part is that with every upgrade - up till 9.25 - the problems persist. It's as if the Opera folks are completely unaware of these issues or don't give a damn. Since they can't be unaware, one has to assume they don't give damn. The least they should do is address this issue on their home page and assure us all that they are working on it even if they most probably aren't. Well, I suggest we all don't give a damn too (or go back to 9.22) and get another browser. A shame really, but proves the point that the more successful you get the sloppier you become. I used to recommend Opera to my friends but now I'll tell them to stay away.

An update to my last post above: I have tried Opera for more than four hours and still have not experience the hanging problems I had before I used the CCleaner fix. CCleaner must have deleted a file that is causing Opera to hang. I am now using Opera without any problems.

Originally posted by iSherpa:

I totally agree with Innbound. Ever since 9.23 the browser has gotten "worser and worser". Tabs freeze frequently, the page hangs etc etc etc. And now even YouTube pages don't load properly - the thumbnails go off and on. The appalling part is that with every upgrade - up till 9.25 - the problems persist. It's as if the Opera folks are completely unaware of these issues or don't give a damn. Since they can't be unaware, one has to assume they don't give damn. The least they should do is address this issue on their home page and assure us all that they are working on it even if they most probably aren't. Well, I suggest we all don't give a damn too (or go back to 9.22) and get another browser. A shame really, but proves the point that the more successful you get the sloppier you become. I used to recommend Opera to my friends but now I'll tell them to stay away.

Have you tried the fix in my post above? Please post here with your results.

Originally posted by BunkFace:

I have.......... mail and chat are disabled. .........-

I understand opera checks mail on startup, I don't use this and want to disable.

Is the correct by renaming the mail folder ie. Xmail..

Nothing against you Bunkface...


I don't want to be forced to download and run some download cleaner to get Opera to work right.

Mabey Opera should just integrate the feature(sarcasm)

Originally posted by PCDEC:

Mabey Opera should just integrate the feature(sarcasm)

O has integrated the feature, it's called clearing history and deleting cache

Originally posted by BunkFace:

I have found out something that seems to resolve the problem: It seems that using CCleaner ( http://filehippo.com/download_ccleaner ) to remove Opera's Internet Cache and History removes the "hanging up" behaviour.

I have been using Opera for about 10 minutes after doing this, and I haven't noticed the problem yet. I am still using the settings that I have previously used with Opera: opera6.adr bookmarks file - around 350KB(1250+ boomarks). Plugins, Java, mouse gestures, mail and chat are disabled. Memory cache - automatic, disk cache - 400MB, history addresses: 500. Opera info: Version - 9.25, Build - 8827, Windows XP. I will continue to observe and see if it hangs again after some time.

If you have used CCleaner to remove traces of Opera history and cache, please post if this helps with this issue.

Damn, good call with the ccleaner. It took 10 gigs worth of stuff off of my comp. It not only cleared up my opera problems, my entire computer runs a lot smoother. Thanks.

Have to agree with PDEC and Hellene, BunkFace. Opera should get its basics working w/o having to download other programs. And I always clear my history and cache upon exiting but still the problem persisits, and not only on my office pc but my laptop at home too.

Opera folks: are you reading this thread? If so could you be courteous enough to reply??

Originally posted by PCDEC:

Nothing against you Bunkface...


I don't want to be forced to download and run some download cleaner to get Opera to work right.

Mabey Opera should just integrate the feature(sarcasm)

I know what you are saying. This is most probably a bug. Running CCleaner is just a temporary fix.

Originally posted by Hellene Atheist:

Originally posted by PCDEC:

Mabey Opera should just integrate the feature(sarcasm)

O has integrated the feature, it's called clearing history and deleting cache

Correct me if I am wrong, I believe that the difference between CCleaner and Opera's built-in feature is that when using CCleaner, it will delete the Opera files (cookies4.dat, autosave.win, global.dat, etc.) forcing Opera to recreate them when run again, instead of just resetting the contents. I think the problem might be caused by information stored in one of those files.

More info on files used by Opera here: http://www.opera.com/docs/operafiles/

If you're using CCleaner, then you might as well use its' registries cleaner to clean up your computer registries...

In my past experience, upgrade or reinstall of a same application multiple times might create multiple registries of a same application for different versions; & that might lead to constant freezes & crashes...

I have seen this hanging and freezing on a daily basis with recent versions of Opera,I also find on websites and forums that navigating from page to page the browser freezes for up to a minute and there is no apparent remedy.

I have tried altering settings/firewall/AV etc but to no avail, I see a thread running here about Opera crashing several times a day, I have experienced this also.

I have used Opera for a couple of years now and never had an issue of any kind till the recent versions.

Something that is showing up and I have never seen before is an error message that pops up saying "Failed to write to Hotlist, Try again,Yes/No".

Hopefully this is going to be resolved very soon as these issues are making the use of Opera impossible for daily work, I would hate to have to move back to FireFox again.

CCleaner is a great app, worthwhile even if Opera integrates its features.

Does CCleaner also delete the dcache4.url that is also in the c ache4 folder? Sometimes deleting that file after having deleted the rest of the cache4 folder helps. The dcache4.url keeps track of the .tmp files.

Of course, crap cleaner doesn't help those on other platforms (Mac, Linux, etc). I'm on linux and am having the same problem. It would be interesting to find out exactly what crap cleaner is removing so we can do the same.