In my opinion Opera completely sucks and should be wiped from the internet.I used it and it took way too long to load webpages and the downloads were way too slow.
One of my relatives had the same thing. What I did to fix it was go into the internet options and clear the cookies and everything else.If that doesn't work scan for some malware/grayware.If that still doesn't work then you may have to reformat.
Yes there are many ways.Some firewalls have settings in it.McAfee has a thing called Privacy Service that requires you to use a password.Try getting a firewall and going through those settings there will most likely be something there.
Usually I guess right up till 10 000. They have a lot of American history on it and I'm bad enough with Canadian history as it is let alone a completely different country