Opera Leaves Kaka
Opera Leaves Kaka[Note: This problem was not directly related to Opera, but the way Opera interacts with Windows 2000 Pro. Probably *NIX and MacOS don't have the same problem. See below.]
Hmm. I installed OperaBrowser 7.1 (I think it was) in an attempt to see if they had fixed some of the more glaring bugs. They hadn't. When I tried to get rid of it through the normal uninstall (Windows 2000, SP4), I found that the Opera/profile/acpo directory was marked hidden, system. Additionally, the OS thinks that acpo is still being used by something, even though no Opera components remain anywhere on my machine. I searched the entire disk looking for an instance of "acpo" (case insensitive) in text anywhere and found nothing. I searched the complete registry and found nada.
The Opera folk never responded to my request for technical support in getting this leftover piece of crap cleaned off my machine. Oh, well. So much for Opera. I really don't feel bad at all about the decision I made a couple of months ago to officially drop support for Opera in web sites and online applications that I develop.
[Marty, did you scan the registry? I'm curious if the actual access to this "acpo" thing was identified. -- GarryHamilton]
How did the OS indicate the directory was in use? Were there any files in the acpo subdirectory?
No, the acpo directory contains no files. Nothing references it. I scanned the registry thoroughly. In fact, I scanned the entire hard drive looking for a case-insensitive instance of "acpo" anywhere, and came up dry. I have been all over the Internet looking for a solution for this and finding none. Thanks be to Opera for Yet Another Nameless Bug that has no roots and no solution.
[I'm puzzled. You're talking as if this sort of thing is hugely unusual for MS-world software. I'm also puzzled that you're mixing up the target of your ire (Opera) versus those impacted by your decision (your users who are also Opera users), but that's a common enough phenomenon that I'm not too puzzled. -- DougMerritt]
Blame MS's "lock every open file and parent directory" scheme. You can use Process Explorer from sysinternals.com to see which process owns the handle, at which point you can either snap the handle or kill the offending process.
The acpo stuff is Opera's ad-delivery system (the free version of Opera is adware). Details can be found at http://www.opera.com/docs/ads/. Note that this page claims that the directories used by the advertising system are removed as well. How old/which version of Opera was this?
Later, A Solution:
It turns out that Opera had done some phunny stuph with the permissions settings on that acpo directory. After I dug into it with some very low level tools I managed to change the Win2KPro permissions and delete the directory. My question is, how the heck did Opera do that in the first place, and why?
Whatever. I ain't using Opera again anyway, I ain't supporting it for web applications, and I tell everybody who will listen that the only browser to have is Firefox. 'NuffSaid.
Even Later...
Well, now I get to eat my words. Version 8.5 solves a lot of the problems apparent in earlier versions, so I am back to supporting Opera again. Even though Opera still has certain problems I can't just dismiss it as a bad browser. The problems aren't anywhere like what they were before and they aren't any worse than IE or Firefox. Hmph. -- MartySchrader
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(last edited November 19, 2005)
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