radarlove wrote:

I have never liked Opera, but since Firefox made using their extensions
near impossible,

Firefox 2.0.0.20 was the last version to support Windows 98. That is
too old to provide the internal functions required by many extensions
unless you can find really old versions of those extensions to match the
old version of Firefox. With an old OS and an old app, you need the old
extensions.

I thought I'd give Opera another try. That was a
mistake!
Opera 10.63 is the last version that runs in Win98.

I installed Opera 10.63 in Windows 98se, and rebooted.
After the reboot, my screen went from 768x1024 to 640x480.
This also messed up the order of my desktop icons....

Is this a known bug in Opera 10.x?

[Note] This is not the first time older versions of Opera have corrupted
my operating system settings.

I recall also seeing Windows updates causing a change in screen
resolution so I had to reselect the one I had after the reboot. Some
updates actually caused 2 reboots: one to go into Safe Mode to allow
replacement of what would be otherwise inuse files and reboot again to
go into Windows normal mode. The interim safe mode boot caused a change
in screen resolution (it won't use the highest resolution available but
uses only 640x480). Some apps are coded to display at a minimum of
1024x768 so I had to use the keyboard controls (Alt+Spacebar to open the
control menu, M to move, and arrow keys to move the window around) to
see other parts of the app's window. The change in screen resolution
resulted in all the desktop icons got rearranged when booted into safe
mode since screen size was smaller. I got the same rearrangement upon
the subsequent normal boot. When a reboot is required for an update,
sometimes the UI gets changed. Even in Windows 7, sometimes an update
requiring a reboot has resulted in losing my toolbars added to the
Windows taskbar. The update forced a fresh state for the taskbar.
Fortunately that only occurs a couple times per year and it's easy to
re-add my toolbars (re-adding them is easy while arranging them takes
longer).

You don't mention if the screen resolution change happens on every
Windows boot or just the one time. How long was Windows 98 up before
you installed Opera? If you had Windows 98 running for awhile, you
can't be certain that something else before installing Opera caused the
screen resolution change. Some updates are effected on startup.

I quickly found out that Opera 10.x and below do not support extensions
anyhow.

So the need for old versions of extensions is a non-issue.

Needless to say, I removed it from my system, and restored the registry
from a day prior to installing Opera.
That's the last time I ever use that piece of crap!

So, did Opera change the screen resolution on every Windows 98 startup?
Or was it just the one time. If it was just the one time, well, you're
talking about a 9x-based kernel (a frankenjob of 9x and DOS) for which
the mantra "reboot to fix a problem" was very common. Doesn't seem a
piece of crap if it happened just once, and for an install.

When you say that you restored the registry, did you export to a .reg
file from regedit.exe and then later import that .reg or did you restore
the registry files from a backup? Exporting and importing will not
affect those registry keys to which you, not even administrators, have
access. regedit.exe doesn't show everything so it cannot export it all
and import to everywhere. An image backup would let you restore to the
prior state of your disk which would include the registry *files*.

If you're still trying to use that old OS and get "newer" older versions
of non-IE web browsers to use on that old OS, I don't see a one-time
screwup after the install of new software as being so drastic a
catastrophe as you describe. If the desktop icon rearrangment is not
happening on every reboot, suffer the one-time fault and move on. Just
because I get a flat tire doesn't have me discard the car.

If Opera was changing the screen resolution on every Windows reboot
(rather than its installer or a pending Windows update doing that once)
then, yes, dump it. Since it cannot support extensions, why not use an
old version of Firefox and without extensions? You'd be in the same
state as with Opera: no extensions.

Don't know why you are still using a really old version of Windows, and
a 9x/DOS-kernel frankenjob. I'm not a Linux proselytizer but if the
reason for sticking with Windows 98 is you don't want to pay for a newer
version of Windows then think about moving to Linux. For most Windows-
bred users, Mint is an easy migration. Then you could use the latest
version of Opera, Firefox, Google Chrome or whatever web browser had a
Linux code fork. The Linux newsgroups or forums could tell if your old
hardware will work with Mint. For example, although some folks will
list "PAE-capable processor" as a system requirement, the Mint says
otherwise (http://www.linuxmint.com/rel_rafaela_cinnamon.php, "Booting
with non-PAE CPUs"). Unless this is an archive project (which means you
shouldn't be installing anything other than the OS), seems you should
consider moving to a newer version of Windows (yeah, costs money) or
consider moving to a Linux variant (free but with a learning curve but
some variants are easier to use from the get-go).

Have you yet tried an old version of Firefox on your Windows 98 setup?
Yeah, no extensions but that would've happened if you got Opera
installed without the "repeat screen resolution change on boot" problem
(if it really does repeat and was not a one-time incident).