@leocg Sorry, I should have put that. Opera One (version: 114.0.5282.222). I presume that's the latest version since it was updated a couple of hours ago. I don't know what it was previously. The OS is Windows 10.

I was having trouble with one webpage and decided to update Opera. I went into Update & Recovery and clicked Check for update. It seemed to download the latest version then nothing happened. Then I read what it said under Recovery, "If the browser isn't running well, resetting to a default state might help. You can choose to preserve your personal data and only rest settings or to perform a fully fresh reinstall." I clicked on Recover..., left 'Keep my data and only reset Opera settings.' selected and clicked Recover. After relaunching Opera, I found that I had a clean install of the browser but none of my 230-odd tabs had survived. I went into Extensions and found they were still listed but all were turned off. I switched on the Session Buddy extension, which should have had a record of all my tabs and tab history, but it was completely empty, only showing the two tabs currently open. After finding this forum and reading the rules, I renamed my Opera profile and restarted Opera, so now it is the same as it was, but my extensions have gone. Where can I go from here? How can I restore my old profile or has it gone forever? I feel a bit sick; years of Internet activity has disappeared. I searched the topics here but couldn't find anything similar to my problem. I would be grateful for any help.

Good news. As I was wondering why reinstalling Opera did not resolve my problem, I realised that I did not uncheck "Delete my Opera user data." Hence, if there is a fault with the settings folder, it will remain. I also remembered that before I reinstalled my OS, I copied my two Opera Stable folders. After installing Opera,I replaced the default Opera Stable folders with my saved ones. My settings were all restored except for my previous session (there must have been something wrong with that folder).

So, I realised that if I reinstalled Opera again and let it delete my user data, then the problem would be fixed, and that is what happened. It turns out that the solution was very simple, although the initial cause will remain unknown to me.

Thanks lando242. The properties of the settings folder C:\Documents and Settings<NAME>\Application Data\Opera Software\Opera Stable indicate that the folder is read-only, but this cannot be changed in Windows Explorer, or with a command prompt. Oddly however, the apparent read-only attribute of the folder doesn't seem to be what it appears, according to this knowledge base article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/326549. "Unlike the Read-only attribute for a file, the Read-only attribute for a folder is typically ignored by Windows, Windows components and accessories, and other programs. For example, you can delete, rename, and change a folder with the Read-only attribute by using Windows Explorer... The Read-only and System attributes is only used by Windows Explorer to determine whether the folder is a special folder... As a result, Windows Explorer does not allow you to view or change the Read-only or System attributes of folders."

I understand that what is more important are the attributes of files within the folder. In this case, all the files have only one attribute, i.e. archive. None of them are read-only, including session.db. So apparently, the settings folder being read-only is unlikely to be the cause of the problem.

Since my first post, I have uninstalled and reinstalled Opera. The default setting for Startup, i.e. continue where I left off, remains unchanged, but still sessions do not resume.

I recently re-installed Windows XP Pro and Opera. I have Opera set to continue where I left off, which it always used to do, but now it does not resume a session when restarted. Can anyone help with my problem, please (apart from upgrading my OS)?