Hello Blackbird, thanks for the information.

By the way, I tried Apple Safari and rejected it because it is very difficult (under Windows) to use search engines other than Google, Bing or Yahoo - and I don't (and won't) use any of them.

Yes, it is strange that blocking certain URL's causes the programme to crash (the dashes in my last message were originally "ctrl-alt-del" (with <-> - I suppose the forum software thought they were HTML).

My firewall is Sunbelt (Kerio), I only have an anti-virus AVG on one (different) computer in my network for testing purposes (as a professional I don't ever do what one shouldn't and I have never had any virus).
There are no multiple user accounts on any machine (except 'administrator') and everything is always installed for only the current user.

After the Opera crashes it was necessary to use ASR to restore as no restauration points worked. So I lost any later history.
From memory it came from clicking on a link within Opera which led to an archived version page (I downloaded it a while ago).
I have only ever had the v. 11.10 installation program - it downloaded v. 20 from Internet during the installation without asking. I only realised what had happened when I saw it installed in the Control Panel -> Add/remove programs.

Regards

Thanks, pesala.
I tried this (12.17), but it's no better.
At the end of the installation the program started but the system hung up (no mouse or keyboard, so no <CTRL>-<ALT>-~~: a hard reset necessary.
Once re-started I tried running the program. It requested an HTTPS access to 1e100.net, port 443 (granted through my firewall); then HTTP to redir.opera.com, port 80 (granted); then the same as the first again. At that point it re-started the computer without warning.
So I have restored the system again and am giving up on Opera.
Regards

Hello
I have used Opera for years (for testing my own sites or visiting others which work differently with SeaMonkey, Internet Explorer etc) and have always been very satisfied.
I wanted to update and used the installation programme v. 11.10 but it installed Opera 20 'stable' without even asking if I wanted it.
'Stable'!!! - I tried on two different computers with Windows XP SP3 and both times the installation crashed with a Blue Screen of Death. After a hardware reset the programme seemed to work, but I removed it because I had no confidence and restored the systems.

What is the latest version of the plain ordinary Opera which works simply like before? (and doesn't install v. 20)
Regards