This post is directed at the owners of Opera. Why have a forum when no one seems to be able to help? This is a serious problem and I have read of others facing the same tribulations. Is there no fix at all?

P.S. I have tested the RAM, GPU and the main processor. All okay.

Hi, I am at my wit's end with Opera. I am about to dump it and go over to Brave But I like Opera's speed tile format and I have used it for some years now so I am going to have one last shot at fixing the problem my PC is having. Details:
Windows 7 running 16gb RAM (I've kept 7 because I want access to Windows Media Centre as the setup is a Home Theatre PC)/
I have the latest version of Opera. I have turned off hardware acceleration. I have reset Opera to its factory fresh condition. I have uninstalled and reinstalled the program...same problem. I have updated my Nvidia GPU drivers. I have run SFC and the machine checks out AOK. The problem persists.
What happens is this: If I use Youtube for more than a few minutes in full screen the videos suddenly freeze as if I have paused the video. Then I can minimise the screen using the keyboard (not the mouse) But if I try to open a new tab nothing happens, Opera acts as if the internet has dropped out. Note that this does not happen in Edge, Firefox and Brave, just in Opera. I then have to drop out of Opera and restart the browser to get it going again. Any advice gratefully received.

I have a new strange problem. I have Firefox, Chrome and Edge on my Windows 7 machine and they do not fault at all. When using Opera, however, after a few minutes of browsing if I try to open a new tab or go to a new Youtube video the internet connection drops out. I then immediately check the other browsers and they are fine. This is an Opera problem, surely. I uninstalled Opera and reinstalled it ... same problem. I made sure that I had ownership of the Opera profiles folder... yep, that was fine. When the net drops out I have to exit Opera and restart. When I restart I often get a message about not having adequate permission to use the profile folder and Opera will not start. If I then click the Opera shortcut again the program opens fine only to fault and drop the net connection some minutes later. Here is the message that flashes up on the desktop:

I'm having the same problem. I also have Firefox, Chrome and Edge on my Windows 7 machine and they do not fault at all. When using Opera, however, after a few minutes of browsing if I try to open a new tab or go to a new Youtube video the connection times out. I then immediately check the other browsers and they are fine. This is an Opera problem, surely. I uninstalled Opera and reinstalled it ... same problem. I made sure that I had ownership of the Opera profiles folder... yep, that was fine. When the net drops out I have to exit Opera and restart. When I restart I often get a message about not having adequate permission to use the profile folder and Opera will not start. If I then click the Opera shortcut again the program opens fine only to fault and drop the net connection some minutes later. Here is the message that flashes up on the desktop:

@leocg Hi there... Yes, Opera. I finally solved the problem. For some reason, if you minimise the Opera window, then resize it and then maximise it, the problem is fixed and the taskbar pops up as normal...
Phew!!!

Hi all,
When using my Win7 PC this evening I found I could no longer get the taskbar to pop up to switch between programs when hovering the cursor down at the bottom of the screen. The taskbar is set to autohide and I haven't changed that setting. I Can get to the taskbar to appear briefly by hitting the WIN key but that's the only way I can force its appearance. Any ideas? All replies greatly appreciated.

I gave up and downloaded Opera Developer. No more crashes. I simply synched the new Opera with my account and all was working as before. A pain but worth it. I am hoping the next update of standard opera fixes things.

I have solved this vexing problem by trial and error. It's a right royal pain in the backside but I found a simple fix. Go into "settings" and the go to "browser" and then "system". There is an option for "hardware acceleration when available". Click on that choice and your spinning pointer goes away. Hooray!