Opera 10.63 crashes while trying to show the crash dialogue

[Andrew T.]

Another day, another software problem! This one's a bit more significant than the Skype stuff, though.

For several years I've been regularly using a lightly hex-edited copy of Opera 10.63 on my Win95 system. Today, it crashed (which honestly wasn't unusual). But then when I tried to run it afterwards, this ridiculous "Opera crashed while trying to show the crash dialogue" box appeared, and the software refused to load:

The crash logs themselves invariably begin with the lines "OPERA-CRASHLOG V1 desktop 10.63 3516 windows C:\PROGRAM FILES\OPERA10\OPERA.EXE 3516 caused exception C0000005 at address 00000002 (Base: 400000)," followed by a stack and memory dump.

Although Opera has always felt a bit flaky compared to the Mozilla browsers, this is the first time I've ever experienced this behavior. Even more confoundingly, nothing I've tried except for replacing it with version 9.64 has had any effect: I tried wiping the profile as well as uninstalling and reinstalling in a different directory, but the "crashed while trying to show the crash dialogue" dialogue kept popping up afterwards every time!

This seems to be a pretty obscure issue: Searching the web brought up nothing except for a few isolated leads caused by people running Opera in circumstances even more unusual than mine (e.g., in Wine on Linux). Would the Opera community forum be of any help, or are pre-XP topics there good as dead these days?

[jumper]

I sometimes run 10.63 on 98se and this sound familiar. I would retry running Opera after each of these steps:

1) Reboot.

2) Delete all Opera cache, temp, and log files (anything modified in the last day).

3) Restore the previous day's registry.

[Andrew T.]

I tried 1 and 2 early on. 3 would be impossible without a time machine.

More observations: If I install Opera 10.10 (or 9.64), it works. If I overwrite 10.10 with some 10.63 files...even if none of these are profile files, and none of these have been modified since 2010...I get the error.

I think I'll just revert to 10.10. It has a better UI, and it isn't as though 10.63 is much more current these days to be worth the effort.

[M()zart]

I would try digging the Opera user profile. Probably it's somewhere there.

[lolnousernameforyou]

You're lucky I cant even get opera 9.xx to run on my windows 95 machine it just gives me errors.

[Andrew T.]

I wouldn't be surprised if Opera (like Firefox) required some library updates that a fresh Win95 installation wouldn't have. Keeping track of all the DCOMs, Winsock 2s, and whatnot after so many years is easier said than done; though there's a decent list here.

As far as I know, 10.10 is the last compatible-out-of-the-box Opera version and 10.63 is the last hex-editable one.

[lolnousernameforyou]

Yeh that is probably the issue I haven't been able to update the darn thing since they took down the old windows updater. > thank you for the link.

[cov3rt]

i bumped this because im interested in running opera 10.63 on windows 95, i browsed the web page that mentions instructions on how to get opera 10.63 to work on w95 but im not sure on the instructions so i tried to manually copy the modified dll and exe opera files in the zipped file on the page and replaced them with the opera 10.63's files but it didn't work. i did this a while ago so i don't remember exactly what i did, i believe i used the classic 10.63 opera installer on windows 95, did not launch the browser, replaced the dll and exe files, then tried launching it but it didnt and gave an error, the download name on the web page says "opera 10.63 windows 95 fix zip package with above fixes", implying as if all the instructions are done? i also want to make it known that im not familiar with hex editors and don't want to use them.

[sdfox7]

i bumped this because im interested in running opera 10.63 on windows 95, i browsed the web page that mentions instructions on how to get opera 10.63 to work on w95 but im not sure on the instructions so i tried to manually copy the modified dll and exe opera files in the zipped file on the page and replaced them with the opera 10.63's files but it didn't work. i did this a while ago so i don't remember exactly what i did, i believe i used the classic 10.63 opera installer on windows 95, did not launch the browser, replaced the dll and exe files, then tried launching it but it didnt and gave an error, the download name on the web page says "opera 10.63 windows 95 fix zip package with above fixes", implying as if all the instructions are done? i also want to make it known that im not familiar with hex editors and don't want to use them.

 

One question that immediately comes to mind is, "Do you have at least Windows Sockets 2.0 for Windows?"

 

Opera 9.5 on Windows 95 requires Windows Sockets 2.0 (published June 15, 2008)

 

The direct link for w95ws2setup.exe is available here: http://web.archive.org/web/20080615142443/http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/e/0/0e05231b-6bd1-4def-a216-c656fbd22b4e/W95ws2setup.exe

[cov3rt]

 

i bumped this because im interested in running opera 10.63 on windows 95, i browsed the web page that mentions instructions on how to get opera 10.63 to work on w95 but im not sure on the instructions so i tried to manually copy the modified dll and exe opera files in the zipped file on the page and replaced them with the opera 10.63's files but it didn't work. i did this a while ago so i don't remember exactly what i did, i believe i used the classic 10.63 opera installer on windows 95, did not launch the browser, replaced the dll and exe files, then tried launching it but it didnt and gave an error, the download name on the web page says "opera 10.63 windows 95 fix zip package with above fixes", implying as if all the instructions are done? i also want to make it known that im not familiar with hex editors and don't want to use them.

 

One question that immediately comes to mind is, "Do you have at least Windows Sockets 2.0 for Windows?"

 

Opera 9.5 on Windows 95 requires Windows Sockets 2.0 (published June 15, 2008)

 

The direct link for w95ws2setup.exe is available here: http://web.archive.org/web/20080615142443/http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/e/0/0e05231b-6bd1-4def-a216-c656fbd22b4e/W95ws2setup.exe

 

yes

[danikayser84]

Did you install both DCOM95 and WinSock 2.0 for Windows 95? Forgot to mention that on my page about Opera 10.63 on Windows 95, will update it ASAP

 

(for the record, I have tested it on both an actual IBM 390E laptop as well as in VMware Workstation, in the latter case I also had IE 5.5 SP2 installed and using the Active Desktop/Shell Update)

 

Edit: also forgot to mention, which version of 95 are you running? I only tested on OSR2, have not tested on RTM or OSR1

Edited October 17, 2015 by danikayser84

[cov3rt]

Did you install both DCOM95 and WinSock 2.0 for Windows 95? Forgot to mention that on my page about Opera 10.63 on Windows 95, will update it ASAP

 

(for the record, I have tested it on both an actual IBM 390E laptop as well as in VMware Workstation, in the latter case I also had IE 5.5 SP2 installed and using the Active Desktop/Shell Update)

 

Edit: also forgot to mention, which version of 95 are you running? I only tested on OSR2, have not tested on RTM or OSR1

yes, both winsock 2.0 and dcom95 were installed, as well as ie 5.5 with sp2, directx 8.0a, etc, although i don't remember if i tried it with active desktop enabled, perhaps it may work with it enabled, i use windows 95 osr 2.5. my question is simply on the instructions, am i right that all you have to do is install opera 10.63 and replace the dll and exe files with the ones listed on that site and when relaunching, it should work? assuming i have all the other requirements? im gonna go ahead and do the same method as implied with active desktop enabled. 

[cov3rt]

ok, i got it working now without needed active desktop enabled, it seems that last time i tried to test it, i either installed it incorrectly and / or the system needed more updates. all i had to do was use the classic opera 10.63 installer, installed it without launching it yet, copied and replaced the old opera.exe file and dll file with the newer ones, and then i was able to launch the browser and it worked fine.