Huge number of opera ".dll" files in windows/temp folder
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blackbird71 last edited by blackbird71@burnout426 said in Huge number of opera ".dll" files in windows/temp folder:
... Hmm that weird that Opera would generate them on startup and not just when installing/updating. What's your OS locale? Maybe if it's not en-US, Opera generates them automatically on startup for some reason. ...
I'm in the US midwest. About all I know is that this has been going on for some time with regard to both Opera and Windows versions on this 9-month-old desktop system, under both the original 1703 and 1709-upgrade Windows 10 Pro versions of OS. The older-dated files have been deleted during a couple of clean-up efforts, so I don't know the exact starting point in time... I do know that the last round of cleanup involved file dates starting around late January. Opera is set to (and does) allow auto-updating and those have been successfully occurring. Otherwise, Opera and my other browsers all run fine and uneventfully. Perhaps it's just another of the many mysteries involving programs running under Windows 10...
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donq last edited by
@leocg said in Huge number of opera ".dll" files in windows/temp folder:
@dede6 Those files aren't unuseful, they are created when Opera is installed or updated and should be removed (by Windows?) after that but it isn't.
Every time you install or update a software, it will write temporary files to the %temp% folder.First, no third-party application should write into windows\temp folder - this is used by some windows programs (win defender, click-to-run telemetry) and/or in cases, when some non-interactive account (without folder in Users) requires temporary space. windows\temp is not %temp%. Looking at file security it seems that these files are created by system account - would it not our beloved Opera, I would ban such behavior.
Second, I see these dll files created multiple times each day (after starting opera), those are identical byte-by-byte (up to next real update), only creation time (and file name, which are correlated) differs by few hundreds milliseconds. This is clearly an error from opera updater side. Dev stream here.
Waiting for fixes. Patiently.
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donq last edited by
@blackbird71 said in Huge number of opera ".dll" files in windows/temp folder:
Perhaps it's just another of the many mysteries involving programs running under Windows 10...
Could happen with programs, written in 1995 or so. Should never happen with current software. Windows 10 is not to blame, at least not in this regard.
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leocg Moderator Volunteer last edited by
I've just ran Opera installer to test and could see an 'opera installer' folder and a couple of dll files being created on %temp%.
I removed them, started Opera and no such files were created, just two lock files related to metrics.
Running the auto-update will create the 'opera installer' folder if there is an update but no dll files. -
donq last edited by
@leocg
In %temp% are only few Opera .lock files. In windows\temp are dlls.
It could be scheduled opera autoupdate task, which seems to run under SYSTEM account. I start and shut down my pc daily - no sleeps here, on desktop system.
Well, looks like it is so - dll files are created at system startup and at 20:31 - which are exactly scheduled triggers for running it. D**n, I hate any automatic updates. Apparently I have to disable/remove it. -
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blackbird71 last edited by
FWIW, if I rename Opera's installer.exe file (eg: xxxinstaller.exe) in the Opera program folder, starting up Opera no longer causes the Opera_installer_yymmddtttt####.dll files to be written to the \windows\temp folder. Renaming it back to installer.exe causes the file writing at each Opera startup to resume. Something seems to be occurring at Opera startup that either invokes something in, or copies something from, the installer.exe file and creates a new dll in the temp folder... renaming the installer.exe file seems to block that process, whatever it is.
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burnout426 Volunteer last edited by burnout426
Yeah, I can confirm now on the dll files. I was looking at %temp% instead of %windir%\temp. Sorry. Thanks @blackbird71 .
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larrysstone last edited by
@donq Yes, I agree - a bug. Sure, it is easy to delete these unwanted files out of the Windows temp directory but why should I have to and why do I receive 10, 20 30 of these each and every day? The browser is already installed, A nasty bug that needs to be corrected.
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larrysstone last edited by
@blackbird71 Opening/closing has nothing to do with the creation of these files. I booted up about three hours ago and then launched my Opera browser, I did not open and close the browser multiple times, I opened it then started surfing the Internet. in three hours Opera created three of these files:
03/29/2018 04:44 AM 1,857,024 Opera_installer_180329084401885.dll
03/29/2018 05:06 AM 1,857,024 Opera_installer_180329090644175.dll
03/29/2018 06:12 AM 1,857,024 Opera_installer_180329101254337.dll -
A Former User last edited by
Yes, i can confirm the problem with a german version as well.
Os: win7 64 prof
Opera-Version: 52.0.2871.40Do have the problem since the last three updates.
Files are growing in c:\windows\temp and named like Opera_installer_180329212644142.dll, Opera_installer_180329212825812.dll, Opera_installer_180329213651953.dll, ...Seems to be files generated when opera checks for updates.
It looks definitely like a bug and is eating up harddisc space. -
blackbird71 last edited by
@larrysstone said in Huge number of opera ".dll" files in windows/temp folder:
@blackbird71 Opening/closing has nothing to do with the creation of these files. I booted up about three hours ago and then launched my Opera browser, I did not open and close the browser multiple times, I opened it then started surfing the Internet. in three hours Opera created three of these files:
03/29/2018 04:44 AM 1,857,024 Opera_installer_180329084401885.dll
03/29/2018 05:06 AM 1,857,024 Opera_installer_180329090644175.dll
03/29/2018 06:12 AM 1,857,024 Opera_installer_180329101254337.dllI must respectfully disagree with the characterization of Opera startup 'having nothing to do with the creation of these files'. While there may indeed be other mechanisms for creating new such files by a constantly-open Opera, on my system they are auto-magically created each and every time I start Opera - even if I start Opera, immediately close it, and then restart it again all within a minute or less. Each startup operation causes a file to be immediately written, differing only in the timestamp. Combining what you've observed with what I've seen, it's always possible that there's something in Opera that is writing a file at each startup, then periodically writing another file at some interval or operating event if Opera remains open.
