Install Opera In C:\Program Files (x86)\

A Former User @burnout426

@burnout426 said in Install Opera In C:\Program Files (x86)\:

.....That's the way you should always install Opera unless you have a reason to do otherwise. Opera defaulting to "current user" (even if you're an admin) and "%LOCALAPPDATA%\programs\Opera" is weird and was not like that in old Opera (12).

Might be weird but that's exactly what it did to me. No option to install to C:\Program Files in fact no install options at all at that time. After the install I noticed that it had put it to the Users directory.

burnout426

burnout426 Volunteer @Guest

@zgreenghostz said in Install Opera In C:\Program Files (x86)\:

@burnout426 said in Install Opera In C:\Program Files (x86)\:

.....That's the way you should always install Opera unless you have a reason to do otherwise. Opera defaulting to "current user" (even if you're an admin) and "%LOCALAPPDATA%\programs\Opera" is weird and was not like that in old Opera (12).

Might be weird but that's exactly what it did to me. No option to install to C:\Program Files in fact no install options at all at that time. After the install I noticed that it had put it to the Users directory.

Options might not have been available in the installer back then, but the options are there in the installer now, even in the web installer that opera.com serves you by default. The options are there whether Opera has already been on your system before or not. If it has been, after clicking "options", change the "install path" if you want to install to a different place instead of upgrade.

So, you should have no problem fixing things now.

leocg

leocg Moderator Volunteer @Guest

Here: http://get.opera.com/ftp/pub/opera/desktop/

ardwych

ardwych @sgunhouse

First of all I would like to congratulate zgreenhostz for his equanimity in the face of circumlocutory responses from the helpers here and adding 'LOL' when he was obviously frustrated in having to ask his question many times over. Well done, zgh.

Although I have plenty of other things waiting for me to do, I felt I had to register and post a reply that was only (partly) solved by a moderator's single line post after 21 earlier replies.

Like Adobe, that wants to make almost everything a little different and unfathomable in a GUI environment that is meant to make operations obvious and intuitive [here I am reaching for my mousewheel so that I can see what I am typing], Opera seems to be following the same path: everything is just a little different in its own style irrespective of what users have learned from 45 years of Windows presence on the planet.

The OP was asking how to install Opera in the Customary Way in one of the Program Files folders that every other program uses. The few exceptions that there are prove the rule.

[more mousewheel[ I have spent a good hour (plus this effort) trying to find out how to install Opera64 (launcher.exe, it turns out) where I (and a billion other people) expect it should go.

This insistence on putting its executable in AppData in an effort to simplify installation (to the point of stupidity, imho) is perverse, imho.

Consider this, please: We Are Not All Administrators . For everyday activity I and millions of others work from a standard user sign-in. If anything prompts us for elevated permissions we are asked for an admin password. That's a precaution and a warning. If we want to install a program, we expect the admin password prompt.
All the programs in the world, except one, can accommodate this arrangement.

When I take the offered Opera download and run it, I see that it won't update my Program Files (x86) install from early last year but it puts it in my data folder branch, an executable, that demands no admin permissions.
Try though I might - even by gingerly hovering over a '64' link and downloading the 64-bit 'installer' - it Insists on installing under my username.

I ask the web and the forum how to install Opera normally as a program and I see talk of Options (never seen), offline installers and standalone installers - but no links.
I'm not unfamiliar with these things, but after about an hour and repeated attempts at installing, I happen to notice a tiny faint grey link saying 'Options'!`

There's too much to say about this saga - the absence of 'All Users' under that Options, getting the FTP link, finding the Windows 64 installable, finally running that as an admin from a user sign-in, not being offered 'All Users' during that install, not being given the choice of adding to my (user) menu, being given an Opera icon on the taskbar (unasked), having to create an Opera shortcut in all users' Start Menu Programs folders by renaming it from 'launcher.exe - Shortcut.lnk' to 'Opera.lnk', and finally testing it to see it it picked up my old data/setting and not the admin's from where it was installed.

How hard can it be to do things the normal way, Opera?
I have Nordic blood so I would like to support your efforts rather than those of the unpleasant tech majors - but you do make it very, very hard.

For anyone still after the answer, in part, take that ftp link (File Transfer Protocol) above, click away until you see the Windows 64 link, right-click it and save it, right-click the downloaded file (~60+MB) and 'Run as Administrator'. Look for the tiny 'Options' link and walk around the C: drive to the 'Program Files' folder - Don't Put It There - create an Opera new folder and put it there (the default link to AppData is too long to see that it requires an Opera folder you must choose - and it will install - not Opera.exe per se but an executable 'launcher.exe' that is, unintuitively, Opera.
You'll have to handle your user menu and desktop shortcuts yourself - I have to go and walk the dog, late, after this extended delay.
Good luck.

sgunhouse

sgunhouse Moderator Volunteer

It isn't that hard. Download whichever installer - even from the downloads page - and run it.. The initial dialog will give you two buttons - Install (or Update if you have an older version) and Options. Click on Options, change the install type to All users, and the install path will be changed automatically to the correct one. Click Install, Opera will ask Windows for access so you'll get a UAC dialog.

That is how it should be done, not by right-clicking and choosing Run as Administrator.

ardwych

ardwych

Nope, no so, sgh. In all the installs I've encountered over the years, this is among the most obscure.

Go to the landing area of the download page and what do you see? A big Download (Recommended) button.
Take that, and nothing you say obtains.

I see in faint grey small font End User Licence Agreement, Privacy Statement and some other one in the same obscure colour/font, but by that time I've scanned what I've seen, and we all know that we skip the EULA and the legal stuff etc, and on we go.

Yes, I found the other download links lower down on that d/l page, eventually, out of frustration rather than good web design.

I wonder if you had the same perspicacity the first time you grabbed the recommended download. Of course, once you know, you know.

Talk about shooting oneself in the foot... And for a minor browser.

It could be much easier - but I've explained for other readers, nevertheless.
Maybe if you had been around last year, sgh, the world would be a better place. (Is your explanation in the wiki?)
Cheers.

sgunhouse

sgunhouse Moderator Volunteer

So you don't see that your "some other one" reads Options? Really?