Snapshot as default browser instead of stable release

Snapshot as default browser instead of stable release

So, ever since the 10.5 releases started, every time i install a snapshot (now with the 10.6 Alpha too), i can't prevent Windows from using the snapshot as the default browser, and force it to use the stable release (which in this case would be 10.53) as the default browser.

It's really annoying. Especially as Opera is perfectly capable of keeping the two installs (snapshot vs stable) separate in regards to everything from settings to bookmarks to speeddial.

Oh yeah, and i'm on WinXP SP2 (in case the issue is OS specific). Naturally during the installation of the snapshot i did tell it not to set itself as the default browser. But it did anyway, as when i restarted 10.53 it was met by the familiar "Opera is not your default browser" window, so naturally i told 10.53 to set itself as default browser again. Still defaults to the 10.6 snapshot though...

So is there any sensible way to force the default browser to be the stable release? Other than removing the snapshot that is.

Preferences (Ctrl+F12)
- Advanced
-- Programs
--- Details

And make sure that the appropriate ones are checked, ie:
HTML Documents
XML documents
Opera Widgets
---
http
https
ftp
mail

And anything else you might use your default one for... this *should* work for XP (it's what I do when that happens).

Already did that in 10.53. Several times actually. Still uses 10.6 as default, even though i unchecked everything in that long ago.

Then I presume that "Check if Opera is default" is also disabled for 10.6...

It works better if you disable that in 10.6, close 10.6... open 10.5x, go to that area, enable all the options you want, and set the "Check if Opera is default"...

If you haven't done that, try that... if that fails... then you'll have to dig a bit more...

Option 1: (most likely to work)
Open a folder in explorer, and go to Tools - Folder Options, and select the "File Types" tab, wait for it to load, then scroll down to .htm and .html and for both, click "Change" then browse to your 10.5x install, select Opera.exe, OK out of the dialogs...

Option 2:
fire up regedit (Start - Run - "regedit") and go to:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Opera Software\

Delete, or replace everything that points to your 10.6 install to 10.5x... then do the same for HKEY_Local Machine (excluding the "is_admin" if they are there)

Test if that works...

If that doesn't work... you likely got other problems (virus scanner, various other "protective" stuff, that's getting in the way)... but search the entire registry for anything pointing to 10.6... replace it with 10.53...

I've got 8 versions of Opera installed (7.54 to 10.6) and the only thing I've ever had to do in XP, is just the Preference dialog within Opera, however Vista/Win7 are far more complicated if you use M2/e-mail... but for the basic HTML/Open Links/etc it's just the Opera dialogs too.

If you do a repair install of 10.53, that should fix it. I believe the installer overwrites some of the Opera registry keys even if you don't check "set as default". Running the 10.53 installer again will re-overwrite them.

If you do a repair install of 10.53, that should fix it. I believe the installer overwrites some of the Opera registry keys even if you don't check "set as default". Running the 10.53 installer again will re-overwrite them.

Well, reinstalling 10.53 set it back as default browser - thankfully. It's a rather poor solution to a problem that shouldn't be happening in the first place though. Hopefully it's something they'll fix at some point - even if it only affects those of us who have multiple versions installed.

Thanks for the help.

I doubt it will be fixed, it's been like that for a long time.

Hello ,

At least the is a" Use as Default Browser" checkbox in The MSI installer dialog panel ...

cheers!!

Originally posted by jasser:

Well, reinstalling 10.53 set it back as default browser - thankfully. It's a rather poor solution to a problem that shouldn't be happening in the first place though. Hopefully it's something they'll fix at some point - even if it only affects those of us who have multiple versions installed.

Thanks for the help.

http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=259619

Originally posted by Vectronic:

I doubt it will be fixed, it's been like that for a long time.

Well for me it's a new issue, since i only started experiencing it with the 10.5x releases. But if it's been there for longer as you claim, and the development team has known about it during all that time, then i think it's somewhat bad that it hasn't been fixed yet. After all, how can you expect people to test your snapshot/alpha/beta releases, if it's such a hassle to get them to behave i.e. not take over as default browser when specifically being told NOT to.

I know they're focusing on fixing issues with the browser itself, but issues relating to testing or making it a hassle to test the snapshots will only result in them losing people who might otherwise have tested the release. And considering that this is most likely just a matter of dealing slightly different with the registry entries, it should be something that they can fix in no time.

Edit: Looking at the thread k0asati linked to, it seems that this has been going on since December 2008. And reported as a bug. Just puzzling why a stupid little issue that can cause so much annoyance has not been fixed a year and a half later.

Oh well. Once again, thank you all for the help and the info. Now i at least know that the easiest fix for it is a reinstall.