Resetting your Opera profile
Tuesday, 27. June 2006, 17:31:26
If you are in the habit of trying out every new Opera release -- be it a final, a technology preview, a beta or a weekly build; and if all you do is upgrade (i.e. install over the previous Opera installation) instead of doing a clean install; chances are by now your profile\opera6.ini file (under Help > About Opera, see Preferences under the Paths section for its location on your machine) is a veritable mess.
Due to the ever-evolving nature of Opera, many settings in the profile\opera6.ini file change not only in their values but their syntax and semantics as well. Failure to use a well-formed preferences file can cause all sorts of problems; starting with weird page loading, bad CPU and memory usage and so on.
If you think doing a clean install and migrating all your settings and mail over is a big task you are not feeling up to, the simple procedure below may give you enough of what you need. As always, remember to make a full back-up of your Opera profile and mail folders before doing this.
You will lose the customizations you had made by directly editing the profile\opera6.ini file, of course -- and this is mostly a good thing (they are what probably landed you in this mess to start with). In Opera 9, you should be using opera:config instead of editing this file by hand, anyway. You will also lose the personal information you had entered in Tools > Preferences > Wand > Personal information, but it is easy enough to enter again.
Due to the ever-evolving nature of Opera, many settings in the profile\opera6.ini file change not only in their values but their syntax and semantics as well. Failure to use a well-formed preferences file can cause all sorts of problems; starting with weird page loading, bad CPU and memory usage and so on.
If you think doing a clean install and migrating all your settings and mail over is a big task you are not feeling up to, the simple procedure below may give you enough of what you need. As always, remember to make a full back-up of your Opera profile and mail folders before doing this.
- As described above, note the location of your profile\opera6.ini file.
- (Optional) Run Tools > Delete private data to clear your cache and cookies.
- Close Opera completely.
- Delete the profile\opera6.ini file.
- Start Opera again.
You will lose the customizations you had made by directly editing the profile\opera6.ini file, of course -- and this is mostly a good thing (they are what probably landed you in this mess to start with). In Opera 9, you should be using opera:config instead of editing this file by hand, anyway. You will also lose the personal information you had entered in Tools > Preferences > Wand > Personal information, but it is easy enough to enter again.
WIDGETIZE
gabydewilde # 15. August 2006, 16:39
perfect_blue_rollie # 30. August 2006, 13:49
thanks. all i needed to cool down my cpu.
> It should not affect your customizations
> (toolbar or menu setups, bookmarks, notes, passwords etc)
> or your mail / feeds.
it did in fact affect some of the above.
after opera restored ini for itself i had to
* run opera:config, change store for email ('mail roor directory') to my location (all mail comes back, you must then enable panels for it manually (shift-f12))
* point to my own customization for mouse and keyboard (these dont vanish of course)
* point to notes.adr (not on a default path due to installing over and over...)
* put some buttons on gui again (they disappeared completly from MyButtons)
so, thats it, just for other March Hares..
pbr
stepherzz # 23. September 2006, 20:11
w2phoenix # 14. October 2006, 10:59
8i8 # 15. January 2007, 03:20
just thought i'd add: if you do a normal windows search for the opera6.ini file, make sure that you have "show hidden files" checked in control panel-->folder options-->view... that threw me off track for a while...
my yahoo mail works like a charm now.
thanx
d
omnicloud # 27. January 2007, 20:06
holtmi # 30. January 2007, 10:16
addicted2h # 21. February 2007, 08:03
1. My bookmark viewing order was reset to something other than what I prefer (I believe something useless like alphabetical). I prefer my own order. Fortunately, when I changed back to "my order" it had actually 'remembered' this. Phew!
2. Most of my favicons in the bookmarks vanished. Don't know what that's about. And I seem to be unable to recover all of them by going to their sites, some just stay blank. And yes, I have set "save favicon" to 1 (in other words, I've enabled it). Anybody have a guess?
3. Preference settings which had NOT been entered by hacking the .ini file previously, just by changing the settings through the internal Opera dialog: order in which tabs open, start-up options, homepage, skin.
Finally, something I didn't think of: DO SAVE THE CURRENT SESSION (before you delete the .ini), if you want to keep it!
Like I said, the initial problem is gone. But now I have a problem with half of my pages taking really a long time to load (up to 30 sec. - I'm on a cable broadband connection and don't experience delays in Firefox). Any ideas?
MCHAL # 28. August 2007, 23:07