Often, bad results only show up later when some function seems to 'break' or starts to fail. Moreover, I've found that the use of generalized tweaking tools tend to cause a cumulative increase in fragility of an OS over time. As the changes made by the tool accumulate, the system tends to become less and less robust in its ability to withstand other issues that might and do arise. For example, when item A is tweaked to achieve something, item B must also often be tweaked to compensate for the side-effects of the item A adjustment. At some point, enough settings become perturbed that the system is rendered less stable or sufficiently non-standard that things eventually start to break, often in surprising ways. Because all this goes on in the bowels of the OS, it's usually invisible until something unpleasant suddenly starts happening. Because the changes made by the tweaking tool are invisible, all too often, reinstalling the OS is the only way out of the maze of compounded tweaks that have finally let to a major system problem.

As @leocg notes, system hardware (especially drives or RAM) can also begin failing, and normal wear and tear on an OS and its software modules (OS updates, power-fails with files open, etc) can create problems similar to what you experienced. However, I would personally think long and hard about whether or not to re-apply a tweaking tool like System Mechanic and whether any of its performance gains you've actually experienced in the past are worth the added risks to system stability.

By the way, safe mode is simply the OS loading itself without external drivers and with bare-bones default settings. If it's causing problems, it indicates the OS files themselves are messed up. That can be the result of either hardware problems, corrupted OS files, or an over-aggressive tweaking tool that's finally fouled things up.

I tried rebooting in safe mode as was suggested but when I did the system became unstable. It would not boot into safe mode and eventually crashed completely.

It's probably a sign that something is wrong with your computer and/or OS installation.

I have an excellent anti-virus program, 2 great anti-spyware, an anti-exploit, and an ad-blocker. I also have 2 other programs to warn me if anyone is trying to load files on to my computer without my permission.

All of them may be the cause of your problem.

I contacted Opera and I'm awaiting their response.

Contacted how? Opera doesn't provide individual support.

Consequently, there are those who swear by System Mechanic and those who swear at System Mechanic. In the case of those who have been frustrated and alienated by the software, in many of their situations only a complete Windows reinstall (without System Mechanic) has resolved their issues.

My own viewpoint, which has changed 180 degrees over the years because of harsh experience, is that the use of such broad 'mechanic/tweaking' programs risks causing far more problems than justified by the relatively marginal improvements in mostly obscure performance areas that are offered. Unless one has a great deal of technical proficiency in software, especially OS's, the weird problems so often caused by these kinds of software are nearly impossible to resolve without performing a full reinstall/reset of the system. Perhaps System Mechanic is not at all involved here, but that's not how I'd ever place my bet... In your case, you may be faced with either living with the situation or a full system reinstall.

leocg, It installed it on a USB drive. I ran a file called "Launcher" from the USB drive. No changes, it allows interaction within the browser but still does not go to any websites.

It seems that something is blocking Opera's access to the Internet.

I'm not sure what you mean by a "stand alone" installation of Opera

Run Opera's installer, click on options, rename the destination path and change the 'install for' field to 'stand-alone/usb'.

The start Opera from that folder and check if the problem also happens.

If the Win 7 Firewall and turning it off completely doesn't help, then this suggestion may be a waste of time (depending on your firewall settings) ... but just for completeness' sake maybe try deleting the firewall rule - perhaps there's a weird glitch in there somewhere.

I have the same problem. Opera can not load in VPN mode all pages

I guess this topic is not about problems with the VPN.

I have closed firawall and antivirus.

There is a problem with creating the VPN network.

Any ideas

Char0n