totrecal, I have followed the path you laid out and my laptop has been clean of Opera long enough to say It worked!It wasn't that difficult to fix once some light was shed onto this, but before I never even suspected the one program designed keep this from happening. That said, I agree that Vipre is a great anti-virus and have had no other problems or breaches, but I guess nothing's perfect. This is the first I have heard of Opera and suppose I should let them off the hook as well I suspected mal-ware/virus the entire time. . Thank You my friend

@totrecal, Have you or any one found a solution to this problem? I am having the exact same problem. I stumbled on this forum surfing for answers. I can keep up with most of whats being discussed here but I am not particularity tech savvy. I am also using Viper anti-virus and have experienced the same Opera program loading itself over and over again, after repeatedly uninstalling the program. It also seems to be interfering with other systems on my laptop as I am having computer freezes and lock-ups that I have never had before, along with my mouse/touchpad not working intermittently. I know the later is a software problem as every time I restart the computer the problem is temporarily resolved. Similarly, I have never actually opened the Opera program for the same reason that I am terrified to open something that I did not ask for or even ever permit. I am scared to use my only computer to check my bank statements or anything like that, and haven't been able to do so for months now. Any help at all will be very much appreciated as I am at a total loss for where to go from here. Thanks everyone for all the info already given.