Lost all data after autostart with system, not sure how to proceed

Destroy666

Destroy666

Opera keeps adding itself to autostart which is beyond annoying by itself, as it also happens when it autoupdates itself. I have no clue who thought this installation default is a good idea.

However, today it resulted in autostart launch into it saying that it updated to Opera One (but it has already been on that new UI for a while). I don't see any history, extensions, cache, etc. I also lost 30-40 tabs that were open.

It says I can log in to sync, but I'm not doing anything for now to have a higher chance of recovery. Will logging in bring everything including old tabs back? Or what else can I do?There's no file backup unless Opera backed something up itself.

burnout426

burnout426 Volunteer

At the URL opera://settings/onStartup, make sure "Run when my computer starts" is disabled and then confirm on the Startup tab in the Windows Task Manager that the launcher.exe entry gets removed. And, while you're there, disable the browser_assistant.exe entry.

Then, hopefully the startup option won't turn back on again when Opera updates. However, if you manually update by downloading the installer and running it, always click "options" in the installer and make sure to uncheck "run when my computer starts".

Also, make sure you don't have any programs like Kaspersky updating Opera for your. It might always choose the "Run when my computer starts" option when updating.

Hopefully that will solve that issue.

As for your data, your cache is in the "C:\Users\yourusername\AppData\Local\Opera Software\Opera Stable" folder and your profile folder is at "C:\Users\yourusername\AppData\Roaming\Opera Software\Opera Stable". For the cache folder, you can just delete it to start fresh. Should be no big deal.

For the profile folder, there's been a recent mess-up with the data. I'm not sure if you've encountered that or something similar or not as I can't see your profile folder. However, check if you have a "Default" folderi i your profile folder or not and check if it's empty or has Preferences, Bookmarks, BookmarksExtras etc. in there or not. Then, check in the root of the "Opera Stable" folder to see if there are copies there too and compare their sizes to ones in the "Default" folder.

But, really, you should rename your profile and cache folders (as in, both "Opera Stable" folders) to start completely fresh so that you know that are not messed up. Then, start Opera and close Opera.

Then, you can try copying some of your files from your old profile folder to the new one if you think the old files have your missing data.

For example, the "Bookmarks" and "BookmarksExtras" files are for your bookmarks and speed dials. "History" is for "History". "Local State" and "Login Data" are for your passwords. In the "Sessions" folder there are Tabs_xxx files for your recently-closed tabs and Session_xxx files for your opened tabs. There's a "Cookies" file in the "Network" folder for your cookies. There's the "Local Storage" folder and "Web Storage" file for other storage for sites. There's the "Preferences" file for main preferences (that you should avoid restoring if possible).

It all depends on what files you still have in your profile folder and whether or not they still have your data in them or not.

Destroy666

Destroy666 @burnout426

@burnout426 thanks, that Reddit thread helped, most of the data is recovered, except the tabs, but I guess that'll be a matter of playing around with the Session folder, which I backed up as soon as this happened.
Edit: yeah, tabs recovered now too, had to remove newer Tabs_ and Session_ files first.

I can't believe such a big and widely used product messes up something as important as data migration and it's not hotfixed yet as I see it started happening around a week ago.

As for autostart, that doesn't help. The issue is that the installer for some reason has adding autostart entry enabled by default. I worked around it by adding a parameter to the package manager I'm using - chocolatey. But even after that, which worked for a bit, some kind of internal autoupdate of Opera readded the entry... It should be disabled by default in the installer in the 1st place IMO. Because who wants to autostart their browser with system, realistically? It's not good for performance (especially with more tabs than my 30-40), doesn't have reasonable advantages and you can turn it back on with a matter of a click if it's pinned to taskbar.

Destroy666

Destroy666

Actually, cookies were not recovered. Is it just the Cookies file in Network folder or something else I can try copying from old files? Not the biggest deal for me since I'm using a password manager anyways, but it'd save some time if I didn't have to log in to like 50 websites again.

The rest I can confirm as recovered.

burnout426

burnout426 Volunteer @Destroy666

@destroy666 said in Lost all data after autostart with system, not sure how to proceed:

Actually, cookies were not recovered. Is it just the Cookies file in Network folder or something else I can try copying from old files?

I forgot to mention that the Cookies file (at least existing entries in it) is only readable by Opera with the "Local State" file that it was created with. So, you would need to copy the old "Local State" file over too and replace the existing one. However, that means you need to copy over the older "Login Data" file too (if it had passwords stored in it) if you didn't already, as it's only readable by Opera when you have its matching "Local State" file.

The "Local State" file might protect some other things too. So, messing with it can break things in some cases. Might not be worth the chance for cookies. However, you can test and see how things go if you want. Just make backups.

burnout426

burnout426 Volunteer @Destroy666

@destroy666 said in Lost all data after autostart with system, not sure how to proceed:

As for autostart, that doesn't help. The issue is that the installer for some reason has adding autostart entry enabled by default. I worked around it by adding a parameter to the package manager I'm using - chocolatey.

Does Chocolately do the updates for Opera too or just the initial install? If the former and Chocolately uses the full installer to update and you're telling Chocolately to pass --run-at-startup=0 to the installer, I wonder if that switch is just broken like you suspect.