I used to have that problem with Opera 11 and 12. The fix was usually to delete the folder the settings are stored in. I have no idea if it will help with the latest version, though.

As someone who uses a TON of tabs for this that and the other five dozen things, I figured I'd make some public notes of some usability issues I have noticed.

First I would like to give some HUGE kudos to the Opera team for the tab hibernation feature and the ability to have tabs NOT load the second the browser starts. Browser crashes happen, no browser is 100% stable, but beyond that, sometimes Windows decides to restart to apply an update while I sleep, that means the browser has to be restarted. I have been using chrome for a while and that will decide to try and load several windows simultaneously which CRUSHES my machine, and even if I manually load each window in sequence, that's a lot of memory being used. That Opera can delay loading till I view a tab and automatically suspends is great (on chrome I use a tab suspender add-on to do the latter but it leaves MUCH to be desired whereas opera seems to manage just fine.)

Some issues, though is if I have enough tabs hibernated, opening new tabs doesn't actually work, you get a tab that forever loads and the URL bar says "about:blank". That's obviously a huge usability issue and the only solutions I have found are turning off hibernation (BAD) or reloading the browser (since tabs aren't immediately reloaded they aren't sitting there suspended which alleviates the issue for a time, but is a bit inconvenient). The irony, of course being that the problem occurs when I need the tab hibernation feature the most.

A second note. I really really miss the old session manager. I used to just save a set of windows I didn't need at the moment but may need later (eg. going between work, general time waster browsing and hobby window sets) so I could close them out. Didn't have to worry about stuff being in resident memory even hibernated, and didn't have extra windows to worry about. it was great. Now the options aren't as good. I have heard you can save windows to a speed dial group, but that's a terrible kludge. The other option is to use a session manager extension (for the record I have been using Session Buddy), that works reasonably well, but does still have some usability issues. BOTH of the options don't share state data (eg. tab history [ie. back and forward button]) and both bypass opera not loading tabs immediately since that only seems to happen on startup (obviously restoring a window with several tabs to a dozen doesn't cause that much of a problem unlike trying to load a hundred).

A way to create something like the old sessions is to right click on an open tab then choose Save Tabs A Speed Dial Folder - this will save all your currently opened tabs in one folder. You can then name the folder
When you want to open the "session" you right click on that folder and click Open All and all the tabs in that folder will open

That's not really like the old sessions, that's just a huge kludge. Session Buddy is tons better and may actually be a bit better than the old session manager since it lets you easily edit sessions but it is still only a list of URLs whereas the old session manager actually saved the state of each tab (the most important aspect of this being tab history)

Honestly I don't know why they had to nuke the old user interface just to switch to a new layout engine. The old feature set was much better.

What Happened to the HiDPI flag?
I was using that, and though the tabs could have been a bit smaller, it was working more or less fine on my surface.

That doesn't seem to do nything to change the size of the tabs and buttons on Opera.

Thanks for the tips. I'll look into those Chrome extensions.

On a side note, Opera just updated itself and now I don't see the HiDPI option in flags anymore, and I swear the tabs and buttons are even smaller now. I can't even read this text as I type it so I hope It's not mispelled.

There is a "+" icon just to the right of the last tab - that's the new tab button. You might also try enabling HiDPI mode - at least, I think the Surface 2 is supposed be "HD' ... in the address bar type opera:flags and use the search. But no guarantees - as its presence in opera:flags suggests, it is still experimental. (Yes, you'll have to exit and restart Opera for the changes to take effect.)

Must be an invisible button. If I click to the right of the last tab, a new one opens, but I don't see a + there.
Ah I found HIDPI, but it's making things a bit too big actually (I have scaling settings on large right now, With HIDPI enabled, opera looks good on small)

tabs_Hibernaton can help you save a lot memory, since surface use ssd, load and unload tabs dont take much time. Unloaded tabs will be marked as suspended. enable #lazy load if you have multi tabs habit

Good, I use tons and tons of tabs. That's half the reason I used sessions so heavily, to manually unload entire windows, and Chrome on my desktop has a tab suspender. Need that lazy mode on other browsers. A restart KILLS my system because browsers like to load everything back up at once. I also enabled the advanced lazy mode so stuff can slowly load in the background. Not sure how that will interact with the hibernate thing.

Oh, also is there a way to have Opera ope without saving like oter browser do? Forcing me to save EVERYTHING to my downloads folder is a bad habit picked up from Chrome and really needs to go away (I kow it DOES geet saved to the machine when you "open without saving" but it it does so to the temp folder which gets cleaned automatically. I have to manually scour my downloads folder for stuff I need and weed out the one time deals.

I actually switched to Chrome a while back because I didn't much care for how basic the new Opera was, but I recently got Surface 2 Pro and have had nothing but problems with Chrome and hear FF (which I never liked) doesn't support touch while Opera does, so I figured I'd give Opera another try.

It does seem much less basic, which is nice (though I still miss a couple old things I used heavily, one thing I missed NOT using opera was that awesome address bar where I could choose a search engine by prefacing a search with 1 letter. Still find myself typing w something for a wiki search in other browsers). Still, despite supporting pinch to zoom and scrolling by dragging, there are a couple interface nitpicks I'd like t sort out to make it more touch friendly.

Specifically, I'd like some of the interface to be a bit bigger (namely the tabs) and I seem to be missing a new tab button. Can anyone help me get things a bit better optimized for touch usage and mabe provide some additional tips on how to make Opera better or recommend useful extensions. (if anyone makes a tab grouper that functions like the one in IE that'd be great. That's the one thing I like about that browser)

On a side note, one of the biggest things I am missing from the old opera is a good session manager (not just restoring the old session, but being able to save and reload sessions at will and having sessions that are a subset of windows). On Chrome I used Session Buddy which seems pretty good (and the fact it kept multiple autosaves prevented a crash from nuking my last session like happens sometimes in opera). Any equivalent here? Also can tabs be parked (unloaded from memory in some way possibly cached for quick restart to save on memory and CPU)? I saw a setting in opera://flags (#tabs_Hibernaton) that sounds like that but am not totally sure what it does.

So, just about the only reason I have stayed with Opera is for the ability to save sessions and open them as needed. They basically gutted all the things that kept me using Opera despite the tons of problems it always causes me.

Are there any other browsers that can manage sessions like the older versions of Opera, or am I stuck using an outdated browser?