I'm running Opera 38 (the problem existed on previous versions too) on Windows 10 x64 on my Microsoft Surface Pro 2.
I got the Surface Pro 2 two months ago and immediately upgraded it to Windows 10.
I'm a long time Opera user, have been using it for at least ten years on my Computers. So I'm not new to this.

Since I installed Opera on the Surface Pro 2, I consistently get this problem: Whenever Opera downloads something, it crashes. It does so consistently, no matter how big or small the download is. After opening Opera again, I always have to start the download anew (and then it crashes again).
I tried reinstalling Opera but that didn't change anything.
Eventually I changed the download folder to a folder on my microSD card, which actually solved the problem for manual downloads.
But of course, there are also other kinds of downloads. For example, whenever I try to install an Extension, Opera crashes. It sometimes even says the extension was installed, but after reopening Opera (after it crashed), I have to click on install again and then Opera crashes again. Because of this, I was only able to install four extensions so far (and only after a lot of tries).
Basically, every time Opera needs to download files onto the device (this does not only apply to extensions), it crashes.

Chrome and Edge don't show this behaviour when I download something onto the main SSD with them, so the problem is Opera-specific and has nothing to do with the OS or the hardware.

I'm really well-versed with hardware and software, but I got to a point where I have no clue what to try next (short of reinstalling Windows, but I doubt it will solve the problem).
It's really strange because I've never seen this behaviour of Opera on other computers and the other browsers work just fine. Especially strange since Chrome and Opera are basically the same.
But I don't want to switch to Chrome, I got my bookmarks/speedial in Opera sync and a lot of other features that I use.

Obviously I also tried it with a fresh Opera profile but it still crashes everytime it downloads something.
It's really frustrating because it makes Opera practially unusable. Many sites let the browser download some files onto the internal drive, so the crashes happen pretty often. I can't use certain extensions that I need to properly surf the web.

Has anyone experienced this too? Are there any Opera developers here that could attend to this problem?
Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Best regards