Prozactive

I just submitted a long list of posts to dencorso to be consolidated into the new Opera/KernelEx discussion thread. This thread should also be incorporated into that one.

Thanks dencorso! I'll go back and try to compile a list.

An update on this topic. After installing Opera 11.51/11.52 on my laptop as discussed in the KernelEx thread, I decided to try installing the latest version (11.1.102.55) of Adobe Flash Player again and was shocked to find that it now successfully works without errors. I completely gave up on Flash Player 10.x with Opera 10.63 after repeated consistent crashes and errors as discussed earlier in this thread. I don't know whether the now-successful installation is a result of Opera 11.5x, Flash Player 11.x, or a combination of the two but I'm very pleased. I should note that the successful installation was achieved with KernelEx 4.5.1, not the latest version 4.5.2.

I would suggest breaking out the entire extensive Opera-related discussion over the years into a separate thread. That's something I've thought about but don't know if it's possible. This KernelEx thread ends up being a "catch all" location for lots of wildly unrelated topics and discussions only tangentially related to KernelEx.

@Dave-H: As you may have read earlier, I successfully installed Opera 11.51/11.52 and have been very pleased with its performance and stability. I'm also running KernelEx 4.5.2 and I went to the Nokia webpage you referenced and didn't have any of your font issues. I also suspect it's an encoding issue but I'm not all that familiar with Opera's technical details (although I'm slowly getting there). I have noticed some differences between Opera and Firefox especially when displaying special symbols/characters, but I never figured out how to make Opera display them (it puts a rectangle in place of the symbol/character). You may want to try the Opera forums for more advice/help. Good luck!

No, I downloaded it on 14 Nov before his report.

First of all, thank you so much for the latest KernelEx 4.5.2 update. I thought that development had stopped, as mentioned in a separate thread, so this was an unexpected surprise and I'm deeply appreciative. It's been a month since I updated Opera as mentioned in this post so I thought I'd give a quick update. I finally successfully updated Opera from 10.63 to 11.51 (and later 11.52) by extracting the Opera Setup files with 7-Zip and manually overwriting all older Opera files. After a lot of aggravating time-consuming work reconfiguring Opera 11.5x to look and work like 10.63 (bookmarks toolbar on top, pulldown arrow for URL history in address bar, full URL displayed in address bar, etc.), I have to say that I'm very pleased. Opera 11.5x seems to be noticeably faster than 10.63 and also much more stable. Opera 10.63 would periodically crash with a stack fault in module KERNEL32.DLL, but so far that has not occurred with 11.5x. In fact, 11.5x has not crashed once since I started using it. There still are a few minor annoying bugs in 11.5x but like I said, overall I'm extremely pleased. There was one odd puzzling event that did occur sometime along the way while using Opera 11.5x. I ran a registry scan and was surprised to find numerous registry errors associated with Java. Further investigation showed that all Java 2 SE Runtime Environment 5.0 system files had somehow been deleted from my system. This must've automatically occurred while web browsing with Opera 11.5x as I certainly did not delete or uninstall Java 5.0. I do recall reading an extensive discussion in this thread about a year ago about incompatibilities and problems with Opera 11 and Java 5 and 6. I probably should go back and reread that information to see what corrective actions to take, if any. So far the lack of Java has not caused any issues whatsoever. One last thing, I use Avast! 4.8 antivirus and it did not have any false positives with KernelEx 4.5.2 as mentioned recently. That error must occur with later versions of Avast!

Thanks again, Dave-H. That allowed the setup to proceed but I got the same error message "Failed to obtain write access to installation folder. Error code: 6" cited in this post. I may try extracting the files with 7-Zip and manually overwriting the existing Opera 10.63 files as suggested by rainyd.

Thanks for the feedback and info, Dave-H. I just tried installing Opera 11.51 but was unsuccessful. Installing it with the default KernelEx setting caused an error. Changing the compatibility settings to WinXP SP2 allowed the setup .exe file to load but nothing subsequently happened with no files extracted or copied anywhere on my comp. Seems like there were some tricks involved with installing it and I'll have to dig back through this thread for more info.

I have held off using Opera 11.xx as I fundamentally dislike using any app that requires KernelEx to work as it generally seems to cause a whole host of buggy quirky behavior. And, Opera 10.63 (which does not require KernelEx) has worked almost flawlessly with all websites until this week, when Facebook apparently made major JavaScript changes to their site which are incompatible with Opera 10.63 for some reason. I may have to cave and try Opera 11.51 to resolve these showstopping Facebook problems, as much as I hate doing so, especially when they're solely caused by Facebook's arrogant disregard of browser-independent web standardization. I'm increasingly getting angry, sick, and tired of Facebook. EDIT: And interestingly, Facebook still loads okay using Firefox 2, albeit with some formatting problems, which is *MUCH* older than Opera 10.63.

I believe updating the 400.vps file would work. However, you will need to disable the self-defense module in Avast! or do it from DOS or another OS while Avast! is disabled. Alternatively, you could download the manual update file from this URL: http://www.avast.com/download-update

Well I've completely given up trying to install Adobe Flash Player 10. It just will not work with Opera on my laptop for some reason, possibly due to hardware issues. The strange thing is, as I previously mentioned, it works fairly well on my desktop PC although with a few quirks that I've subsequently noticed (e.g., Opera tabs won't close and Opera temporarily freezes when playing Flash 10 content).

Thanks dencorso. Subsequent to my post I did think about the fact that my laptop is quite RAM-limited and wondered if it met the minimum memory requirements of Flash Player 10. I checked and apparently it does, although not by much. I also wondered about its graphics processor (ATI Rage) but didn't find any indication that it was incompatible. The laptop also has Shockwave 10 installed which I don't believe is installed on my desktop PC but I'm not 100% sure of that and will need to check. Again, I'm not sure if this has any effect on the errors I'm experiencing. Per your advice, I will try disabling hardware acceleration to see if it helps. The Opera errors pop up randomly on webpages that do not have any obvious Flash content (Facebook, etc.) generally followed by an Opera crash at some later time. I also did not realize that Adobe released yet *another* update to Flash Player. O.o It seems like a never-ending losing battle trying to patch all the security holes. UPDATE: Well that failed miserably. I am unable to access any Flash content so I can't edit the settings. Opera immediately crashes when I try to do so.

I finally loaded Adobe Flash Player version 10.2.159.1 on my desktop PC and it appears to work fine with Opera 10.63. However, it still causes Opera 10.63 to crash on my laptop as previously described, which is extremely puzzling since I've configured both systems almost identically. I even reloaded Opera on my laptop to make sure there weren't any corrupted Opera system files. I'm completely baffled why it works on my desktop PC and not my laptop. Obviously the hardware is different but I don't think that should be a problem. The systems also run different AV software but again I don't think that should matter.

Thanks. I was wondering when Avast! was going to discontinue support for Win9x as it was originally supposed to end last year. Just curious, where did you find that information? Yes, Win 9x support ended at the end of 2009. I was referring to the support of virus definitions. I'll fix my post to reflect that. @Foxbat: I understood what you meant. I was also referring to virus definitions support, which was supposed to be discontinued at the end of 2010 but has surprisingly still continued. @dencorso: Thanks. Now that I think about it, seems like you did something similar for the "Large HDDs >137 GB" topic where you created a "super" post with links to all the relevant threads. I'll look for those threads and get back to you. @CharlotteTheHarlot: That's interesting that McAfee 6 still works with the latest definitions. My first AV was McAfee 4.0.3 and I used it for an extremely long time, updating it with the sdat files you referenced, until it became way too slow. As I recall, it caused overall system response to become so sluggish as to be almost unusable. Along the way, they also provided a free download of version 8 to settle some class action lawsuit. I tried it but didn't like it for some reason.

Thanks. I was wondering when Avast! was going to discontinue support for Win9x as it was originally supposed to end last year. Just curious, where did you find that information? I'm kinda surprised herbalist hasn't joined the discussion but this topic gets periodically rehashed over and over. It's too bad there isn't some good way to consolidate all of the information.

This discussion on registry cleaning/analysis software is also duplicated in the recent Windows 9x/Me Security Thread for 2011, which makes it quite confusing. Anyway, RegClean from Microsoft also does an excellent job with a more limited scope. It's no longer supported by Microsoft but you can still get it at MajorGeeks.

I subscribe to this idea, too. A backup library is an invaluable asset. I second (or third) this. That's why I make periodic Ghost backups of my OS partition especially before any major system change and/or app(s) installation. It's saved me numerous times. At the very least, you should make a full registry backup beforehand.

@WildBill: I understand. I'm sure you were aware of it and it must be frustrating always trying to hit a moving target. Thanks again for all of your work.

As you know, I too am very grateful for all of your hard work. I did note that your latest MS11-012 KB2479628 update was just superseded by the MS11-034 KB2506223 update Microsoft released several days ago. I assume that happened as you were working on the MS11-012 update, and wonder how much additional work it will take to incorporate the latest update.

Thanks loblo. I have not had the time or energy to try it again. When I do so, I'll use the latest Flash Player version 10.2.159.1 just released by Adobe. I have to say that I'm quite surprised that I'm apparently the only one who's encountering these errors.

Thanks dencorso. I was not aware of them but I don't get the feeling they're the root cause of the problem. Still, I'll try it and see if it makes a difference. It appears to be an incompatibility or conflict between Opera and Flash Player 10, at least the versions I'm using. I'd be interested to hear if anyone else is able to successfully use that version of Flash Player with Opera 10.63.

I've used Firefox since version 1.0 and have been a big fan, but it's been painfully slow starting with versions 3.x on my older hardware. Opera is significantly faster. The errors stopped after I uninstalled Adobe Flash Player 10 and reinstalled version 9. I may try installing version 10 on another system to see if the same error recurs. Still no idea why it's happening as others apparently have successfully used it.

Well, the reason I was accessing the adobe.com URLs was to finally upgrade Flash Player from 9.0.289.0 to the latest version 10.2.153.1 using KernelEx. I followed the earlier advice in this thread to uninstall Flash Player 9 before installing version 10, and everything seemed to go smoothly. However, shortly after reloading Opera I got numerous pop-up error windows with the following message: The Shockwave Flash plug-in failed. A restart of Opera is recommended. And, after accessing the Adobe Flash Player test webpage, Opera immediately crashed after the pop-up error windows with the following data in the crashlogs: OPERA-CRASHLOG V1 desktop 10.63 3516 windows C:\PROGRAM FILES\OPERA\OPERA.EXE 3516 caused exception C0000005 at address 10374FB1 (Base: 400000) Any suggestions or advice for resolving this problem? I'm running Opera 10.63 with KernelEx 4.5 Final. Thanks!

Thanks for all of the excellent suggestions and advice. Unfortunately I'm still completely baffled as to the cause of the problem. I found I was able to access all adobe.com URLs from my desktop PC, which is configured identically to my laptop where the problem was occurring. Later that night, I found that the problem spontaneously resolved itself without any actions on my part and I was able to access any adobe.com URL from my laptop again. This was much faster than the previous time the problem occurred, which took several days before things suddenly went back to normal. I did not check whether I could access adobe.com URLs from my desktop PC that time, but I suspect I would've been able to do so. @CharlotteTheHarlot: I do indeed use Opera 10.63 on both systems but they're configured identically with the same urlfilter.ini filter, hosts file, and other similar files/utilities. @wsxedcrfv: Good points. Both systems use the same DNS servers from my ISP so I should've had the same problem from my desktop PC if they were the cause of the problem. My laptop does use a wireless connection to my router but I don't see how that would have any effect. And I'm confident my laptop is free of malware as I've performed numerous periodic scans with MBAM and other antivirus/malware utilities without any detections, including again recently when this problem occurred. @LoneCrusader: That's interesting that you've had the same problem! I presume you also haven't found the root cause of it. Like I said, I'm completely baffled.