Opera doesn't update in any of the channel for about a year

smokofenek

smokofenek

Hello,

So basically... I use all version of Opera. Yes, I mean all of them. Opera Stable, Beta, Dev, Neon, GX... even an old generation Opera. None of them are able to be updated. Not automatically or from opera://update/. To update them I have to manually google specific Opera and download the setup.exe. It's so annoying that I don't do it almost at all.

Thing is, there was always problem with this. For Years. My old desktop couldn't always download the new version. I don't know where it changed to completely being unable to update. But now I just can't do it at all.

Your version is 75.0.3969.93
Checking for updates…

~~[Check for update]~~

The button is grayed out and I can't do anything with it. And believe me. I tried waiting Hours and nothing ever happens. For example my Beta has 69.x.y.z version right now and Dev 70.a.b.c. Also GX was 71 or 70 sth. And I checked that GX would be 73. I of course manually updated them in the past, otherwise they could have been even 40 or whatever the version was when that thing started.

So it doesn't matter which browser do I use. It just doesn't work. All Operas updates are bugged and I always had the problems with things like that in Opera, even on my old laptop, which I didn't mention earlier. I'm really annoyed by it. But I can't find possible solution. And why All of them? No matter which Opera I use, all of them won't update.

evrene

evrene @smokofenek

@smokofenek I've had the same problem until I figured that it was because of default firewall rules.

Since all versions of Opera are working under C:\Program Files\Opera(Version)\opera.exe (or opera_autoupdate.exe) it is really annoying that after an update you have to add new browser version into your firewall list -unless you are using a firewall that allows you to whitelist a folder completely.

I never get it why install new versions into separate folders? It's annoying.

Anyways. Your problem might be your firewall settings.

smokofenek

smokofenek @evrene

@evrene I'm a bit confused, because I got two kind of exclusions. I can enable some program in Firewall settings, but I don't choose path, I chose specific program, nto a folder, file etc... It just shows me the list of applications I have installed. I can enable there private or public communication. Most of "Opera Internet Browser" listed here had private connection checked in. The other settings is underr Virus & threat protection settings, where I can exclude files or folders from being scanned, which is rather not what You meant, because it just won't scan that folder when i use antivirus scanner.

Btw, I'm using Windows Defender on Windows 10. It doesn't seem to work, unfortunately.

evrene

evrene @smokofenek

@smokofenek For the sake of security I wouldn't recommend you to disable your firewall but use another one like TinyWall. It works conjunction with your native W10 firewall and will never conflict with it, simply because it will overrule. From there, you can totally control which components of Opera can go online or not. That's what I do. Just add opera_autoupdate.exe to whitelist and then see if it is updating or not. Cheers.

burnout426

burnout426 Volunteer

Same setup as you. All my Operas update fine.

Some things I would do:

Uninstall all your Operas. No need to choose to delete your data when uninstalling. When done uninstalling though, delete all of Opera's install folders. And, delete any Opera shortcuts and pinned taskbar icons that remain. You can also delete Opera shortcuts in "C:\Users\yourusername\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch" and "C:\Users\yourusername\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned" too if you want. (Open the Windows Task Manager and restart Windows Explorer if you get any ghost taskbar icons when unpinning any Operas from the taskbar.)

(You can also clear Opera's jump list data from "C:\Users\yourusername\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\CustomDestinations" and "C:\Users\yourusername\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\AutomaticDestinations" if you feel like analyzing some binary files to figure out which one's are Opera's. But, this shouldn't affect updating of Opera anyway, so only do this if you really want to and know what you're doing.)

Delete everything in "C:\windows\temp" (or at least all of Opera's files and folders).
Delete everything in "C:\Users\yourusername\AppData\Local\temp" (or at least all of Opera's files and folders).
Open up the Windows Task Scheduler and delete any Opera Scheduled tasks that are left over (if any).
Remove all rules (both inbound and outbound) for all your Operas in the advanced Windows Firewall settings. Then, reset your firewall settings back to default.
If you have any exceptions in Windows Defender for Opera, remove them. You don't need them.
Make these registry changes (carefully):
- Delete all Opera subkeys that are under "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\StartMenuInternet" and "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Clients\StartMenuInternet".
- Delete "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Opera Software" and "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Opera Software".
- Delete all Opera entries in "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\RegisteredApplications" and "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\RegisteredApplications".
- Delete all Opera subkeys that are under "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Classes", "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes", and "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT".
- Delete any Opera uninstall subkeys that are under "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall", "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall", and "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall".
- Delete any Opera entries in "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run", "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run", and "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run".
Make sure you don't have an environment variable set to disable Opera's updates. See https://superuser.com/a/908364/6488 for more info.
Download the installers for all your Operas, launch them, click "options", make sure all options are how you like, and install. I personally like to use the "all users" option and install to the default directories of "C:\Program Files\Opera", "C:\Program Files\Opera beta", "C:\Program Files\Opera developer", and "C:\Program Files\Opera GX".

(If you need old builds, you can get them from https://ftp.opera.com/pub/. See https://www.reddit.com/r/operabrowser/wiki/opera/rollback_version for how you can precent those builds from updating.)

Once you get everything with Opera set, if Opera still can't sucessfully check for updates, open up a command prompt and run:

ping autoupdate.geo.opera.com

If the test isn't successful, you need to figure out what on your system (outside of Opera) is interfering with the connection. Also, temporarily create another user account (local one not tied to a Microsoft account), log into it and try the ping again and try checking for udpates in Opera there. If it works there, you know it's something messed up on our normal account. Also, for Opera, make sure its VPN is off when you're checking for updates just to see if that helps.

Also, note that Bangladesh, Egypt (and a maybe for Jordan now), block some of Opera's sites. If you're in one of those countries, you might have to use a system-wide VPN (not Opera) to get updates to work.

Also note that older versions of Windows 10 are buggy. Make sure you're using the most recently Windows 10 20H2 build. If not, you need to update Windows.

Also, make sure the time, date, time zone and daylight savings settings are you computer are correct.

If all else fails, you might have to wipe out your hard drive and reinstall Windows to ensure there's no corruption with your files and Windows. If it comes to that, you can try checking your files first. You can also launch a command prompt as administrator and run chkdsk /r to schedule a disk check on next boot (scan will take a long time). You can also use CrystalDiskInfo to check that your hard drive is still good.

Also, Some security software like Sandboxie and BitDefender is known to interfere with Opera. If you have those, you can temporarily disable them to test if that's the case.

Also, you might want to check your system for malware with MalwareBtyes and such.

Also, Opera's autoupdate site might be blocked by your router for some reason. If the ping mentioned earlier is not successful, I'd investigate your router settings too.

Also, there's a small chance that Opera's updater might not like the path for the install folder and or the profile folder. If the install folder path and or the path to the Opera profile folder (goto the URL opera://about in an Opera for the location) are super long, that might be the culprit. If there are any non-ascii characters in those paths, they trigger a bug in the updater. You can test this though. If Opera is installed to "C:\Program Files\Opera" where its profile folder is at "C:\Users\shortusername\AppData\Roaming\Opera Software\Opera Stable", there shouldn't be any problems.

Also, with the Window Task Manager open, when Opera starts up, you should check the Windows Task Manager to see if the Opera autoupdate process starts up and exits. You should also check to see if going the the URL opera://update causes the update process to appear or not. The result could be telling.

Finally, test in a standalone installation to a folder named "Opera Test" on your desktop. Test in that Opera, but don't import anything, don't instsall any extensions, don't enable VPN, don't enable Opera Sync, and don't enable the adblocker. If it works fine there, it's possible that all your profiles are messed up or you're using Opera Sync to sync settings and it's trigger a bug with the updater for some reason.

smokofenek

smokofenek @burnout426

@evrene I'm definitely not going to change my antivirus/firewall program. Also I pretty much doubt this is even the problem.

@burnout426 Do You think I want to do all that? I once removed my Opera completely and lost my speeddial things or something. I don't remember what exactly. But tons of things. Even though I have synchronisation enabled. Also Opera sync is buggy itself.

Especially that this would probably not work at all. I think I even tried this for the same problem when my data has been deleted with no effect to solve the problem. Also it's definitely OPERA issue. I doubt multiple computers have the same issue, when You install Opera from scratch.

Also no, older version of Windows 10 are not buggy. It's not Windows 10's fault. I think it started even when Windows 8 was a thing. So definitely doesn't matter what system it is. It's just Opera not working properly on three different setups.

Aaand... I already tried standalone installation of Opera... when I installed it on this PC, when I bought it. And it didn't work already.

Opera auto updater starts and closes immediatelly, but nothing happens. If it's not firewall, not any kind of data/appdata, neither is it OS's fault, then it has to be Opera's. Why would it otherwise not work on three completely different PC's with different OS's? It was always buggy, as I said, for years.
Since Opera has been updated to this modern look, I think 14? Most of those updates from 14 till 75 were not working properly. Maybe it was 75% of all updates. But I had the problem on 3 different PC devices. So it's not Windows' or firewall's fault. Opera just can't deliver updates properly. ALL other programs I have doesn't have the smallest issue with that. It was always only Opera. All Opera, regardless of settings. And if it was about some AppData thing, it would affect just one Opera, not all possible Operas like Beta or Dev, Neon and GX. It's clearly thing that Opera should fix for ages, but didn't.

I want solutions, but not blaming other things for Opera's bugs. I just want Opera to finally fix this issue. It's not Windows, not firewall. It's think Opera screwed up.

leocg

leocg Moderator Volunteer @smokofenek

@smokofenek I would download and run the installers to get the latest versions, there could have been fixes regarding the auto update.

leocg

leocg Moderator Volunteer @smokofenek

@smokofenek First, for the info: Neon was a one time release and will not have updates.

Second, the Check for Updates button being grayed out while update checking is performed is expected. Obviously, not forever.

Talking about it, didn't you see a red dot in the O menu showing that there is an update?

kened

kened Banned @leocg This post is deleted!

burnout426

burnout426 Volunteer @smokofenek

@smokofenek said in Opera doesn't update in any of the channel for about a year:

Do You think I want to do all that?

Nobody wants to do that, but the problem isn't fixing itself.

It's just Opera not working properly on three different setups.

It definitely could be an Opera bug. And, even if turns out to technically not be an Opera bug, the updater shouldn't be that finicky. However, since no one has your systems/setups, and everything works fine for most of us users, the investigation unfortunately needs to happen on your setups by you. If you can find what on your systems/setups triggers the Opera bug, that could narrow things down a lot so that Opera can pinpoint the problem. Sure, you just want things to work. But, unless you get lucky, it doesn't look like the problem is ever going to go away without your help.

Again, your issue is not typical. And, with you have these issues through the years, through different operating systems, Opera's updater definitely doesn't like something about your systems/setups.

Even if you tried a standalone installation in the past, you should try it again. Things could have changes. Also, at least try the ping command to make sure you can reach the update server.

burnout426

burnout426 Volunteer

For now though, to make things a tiny bit easier:

Subscribe to the RSS feed at https://blogs.opera.com/desktop/ if you haven't already so that you know when there are new updates.
For faster downloads, in cases where there's a small update patch available for the build you're using to the new build (see https://ftp.opera.com/pub/opera/desktop/74.0.3911.232/win/patch/ for example) you can just download and install the correct patch instead of downloading the full installer. When available, the patch is what the updater installs anyway. If the full-size installers only takes a few seconds for your and you're not worried about bandwidth use, just user the full installer and click "options" in the installer to make sure the install options are correct.

burnout426

burnout426 Volunteer @burnout426

@burnout426 said in Opera doesn't update in any of the channel for about a year:

Also, at least try the ping command to make sure you can reach the update server.

You should definitely check the Windows Task Scheduler for Opera's update tasks. For each release channel of Opera, you should have a task for updating Opera itself and one for updating its browser assistant. If you have more than those 2 for each update channel, that could cause weird problems (especially if those tasks run and freeze for some reason). You should also check that the commands they use have the correct paths.

burnout426

burnout426 Volunteer

Is there anything unique about the install paths for all your Operas on all your systems? Some users like to install Opera on a different hard drive than the main one. That shouldn't be a problem in general, but...

smokofenek

smokofenek @leocg

@leocg Yeah, I do that all the time. Manually download the updates. Do You think I use Opera 15 or sth? But it's annoying to do so all the times. And no, there was no fix for the issue that occurs for years.

Also it doesn't matter if Neon had or had not any updates. it doesn't really matters in the issue, because old generation Opera won't have updates as well and I mentioned using it too. I just have every kind of Opera there is to have. And none of them, that should, can deliver updates properly. And the issue occurs for many years but recently (about year or more) it literally won't allow doing that at all.

And the button should be grayed out when checking, yeah. But it says it does check, but it doesn't at all. It won't say there is error trying to get the updates, nothing. It's just static text that won't change.

Oh, the red dot... I haven't seen it for ages. I forgot it even existed. I have to manually google "Opera" to check what is the newest version and if it's worth downloading it. Because I won't download new version when it's just some release number changes. if I could automatically update Opera, I would, but it's not worth downloading the setup and running the install process again and again.

And I enabled both private and public connection for Opera in firewall. It didn't work at all. Nothing has changed.

smokofenek

smokofenek @burnout426

@burnout426 I don't want to lose my data again. I already told that. The last time I made a clean install, I lost something important. And I don't want to lose it again. I have thousands of tabs saved on Opera. Not going to lose neither them, nor the speed dial. Opera sync is not always working as intended.

@burnout426 I have 4 things. I already thought that it may be the case as I could potentially disable any autoupdate tasks, as I do with all programs. But it never caused all the mess for any of the program. if I disabled Flash Autoupdate, it just didn't autoupdate, but I could update it manually. When I disabled Chrome autoupdate task, it just didn't update on its own but I could update it manually. But here I can't manually check for updates.

But the things I got in task scheduler are...

Opera scheduled assistant Autoupdate (some number) - Ready
The same thing but with different number - Disabled
Opera scheduled Autoupdate (third number) - Ready
The same as above with fourth number - Disabled.

So, there are two ready, two disabled, though the update doesn't work on any Opera I have.

Also yes. I never install programs on default paths, unless the program doesn't let me change them. And browsers have its standalone paths too. D:\Browsers. I had this now, last time... but I don't remember the time before last time. Definitely wasn't it the D:\Browsers but it could be custom path too. So yes, my installation path isn't standard one. Also I avoid installing anything on C:\ drive, because C is for system. Now I got bigger SSD, so it's for games too. But I don't install anything else or use it for anything else. C:\ is System/Games disk. D:\ is for the rest.

leocg

leocg Moderator Volunteer @smokofenek

@smokofenek You can try doing a standalone installation of the latest version and see how it behaves in terms of updating.
You can just download Opera USB from the link on the bottom of the page.

Regarding the firewall, I never had to change any rules because of Opera auto update. At least not that I can remember.

Except for a few occasions, I never had issues to update Opera.

smokofenek

smokofenek @leocg

@leocg I will try that later, because I'm a bit busy right now. But I want to say that I have two sync accounts. Stable Opera has one and the second one is to have different tabs synced between Dev And Beta. I once considered the problem may be because my main sync account has almost 10k synced things. It says 5865 boomarks and 1593 speed dials. I once lost either one of them, that's why i don't want to fresh install. I will try standalone installation later, but You can see, it's many things to lose. I don't use most of them, but it's hard to actually clean that much. But it's not the problem, cause the another account has maybe 20 things synced, as I actually doesn't need there that much things. So if that would be the cause, it would surely doesn't affect Dev/Beta.

I tried multiple things already. it's not like I just waited it for solve itself. I tried fresh installs, especially when I changed PC or when I lost my SSD hard drive with AppData etc. And as once I lost my data (bookmarks or speeddial) doing that, I am just afraid it will occur again. I tried cache/cookies wipe but it didn't help either. Nothing I did for that, was actually working. I got my new PC not a whole year from now. I think it was June last year. And since it was completely new device with new disks, I fresh installed everything. And the auto update doesn't work. The only thing I do not standard way is path. I may have later disable scheduled autoupdate, as I already said earlier, but iirc it didn't work from the start before I could have done that. I didn't use the program that did that from the beginning of using my new PC, so it has to be unchanged. I actually change more than just that, I even change Desktop, Videos, Music and other default folders to be on D, instead of C. As I am the only user of the PC, I don't need standard template path, so I use custom one for most of the things. I couldn't change path for installing programs though, because it either doesn't work or I didn't even try googling that it may cause problems, because Windows doesn't want people to do that. I know for sure, that if I swap AppData to another folder, the user will stop working and I couldn't even use Menu Start. But yeah, I don't like standard paths, because they are not only on C:, but also they are so messy. Having programs in two different paths without sorting them. So I install things on specific locations. Browsers, as mentioned above, have its own folder. Except for that I don't really do anything peculiar. That's why it bugs me why does it occur.

leocg

leocg Moderator Volunteer @smokofenek

@smokofenek You will not loose anything with the Opera USB/Standalone installation, it would be a separated installation for testing.

fikenat872

fikenat872 Banned This post is deleted!

burnout426

burnout426 Volunteer @smokofenek

@smokofenek said in Opera doesn't update in any of the channel for about a year:

if I disabled Flash Autoupdate, it just didn't autoupdate, but I could update it manually.

You should be able to disable all of Opera's autoupdate scheduled tasks and still update manually by going to the URL opera://update or opera://about. Note though that those pages require opera_autoupdate.exe in the latest version folder in the Opera install folder. If you rename or delete that file (or other files like install helper etc.), checking for updates (or installing updates) will break. It doesn't sound like you messed with any of those files since you said you saw the updater for a sec in the Windows task manager. But, make sure you don't mess with those files.