Vivaldi comes up as a grey square... will not complete loading.

justintaylor

I'm having serious issues with Vivaldi, I absolutely love the browser, I'm a power user and tabaholic, I guess you could say. I use an iMac naturally and I have OS X El Capitan and I have the most recent updates, that were stable, whatever that version is with Vivaldi, as I tend to keep the browser up to date and I've been using Vivaldi, with only minor little issues, for most of this year already. Point is, I like the browser so much, I made Vivaldi my default browser...

...but now, I can not use it at all and have no idea what to do to get it to start up correctly. I've tried everything I can think of, from restarting, closing it normally, force closing it, and even restarting my computer.

All that happens is a grey box the size of the browser opens and then sits there, never going showing me any webpages. I can leave it running for hours to try and open it, and it still does not open.

How do I not lose some of the tabs, or other data in the browser, and then get the browser to start correctly again?? Is this some known bug? Does anyone know the cause??

Please Help!!

I'm being forced to use Epic Browser, which has benefits, but I like Vivaldi much better.

Thanks.

Ayespy

@justintaylor You probably need to refresh your profile. It's quite possible that one of your open tabs is the problem - so if you reclaim your tabs, you would probably reclaim the problem.

justintaylor

So if you are unable to type anything into Vivaldi, what is the best way to find the file path? Or where is it usually stored on a Mac?

I only get the grey box, so there really is no place to type or ability to do anything within Vivaldi...

I do see it seems I can keep my open tabs in a file as well, which I have a few I need, or at least I hope that is how it works... I for some reason knew this day would come once I had the most need to not lose data... and of course Murphy arrives at the perfect time, per usual.

Ayespy

@justintaylor I don't speak Mac. Hopefully a Mac user will answer here and inform you on that.

Ayespy

@justintaylor The name of the profile folder will be "Default."

justintaylor

I tried searching for Vivaldi Default and that did not find anything helpful. However, when I try to search for just Default, I end up with over 54,000 results... and I swear at least 100 of them, if not more, are folders. Talk about tedious... lol..

Grrr... this stuff always seems to happen at the most inopportune time possible. :-|

lamarca

@justintaylor said in Vivaldi comes up as a grey square... will not complete loading.:

I tried searching for Vivaldi Default and that did not find anything helpful.

You must be to get used to search before posting, don't get me wrong, it's in the Community Rules. I am here to assist you, that's my duty.

See if that helps you to find your profile path:

https://github.com/wfurphy/vivaldi-profiles-cli#default-profile-location-vpcli_path

Don't pay attention to configuration stuffs.

Edited

Ayespy

@justintaylor "${HOME}/Library/Application Support/Vivaldi-Profiles"

justintaylor

@lamarca Yes, I did that search as soon as someone told me that the folder I needed was the Default folder. Unfortunately I had no clue what folder I was trying to find... since I had no idea there was a solution based on finding that folder. Otherwise, I would have done that search prior to asking the question... however if you note the original question, it had nothing to do with folders of any kind, I was trying to figure what was wrong and what solutions might exist, since I did not see anyone else posting the exact same problem I was seeing. In other words, I did not discover that there was even such a folder as a Default folder, until I followed the link supplied to the potential solution above and read more about reseting the browser.

Every step, is a new step, based on new information. I'm learning how Vivaldi is structured and how I might resolve some problems. It's pretty amazing to me all the data that is stored, especially all the databases that are captured in some way. I've found some things I might be able to delete. Crazy stuff...

Also, I did in fact find the file location, at least I think, and based on @Ayespy's response, it must be the right location... however, my location is under Library/Application Support/Vivaldi and it does not say anything at all about profiles on my system.

I changed the Default folder prior to responding and just now while writing this message, my system automatically created a new Default folder and it shows the Vivaldi App was launched, however there are no windows at all... nothing.

Anyone know what that is about ?? Do I shut it down and restart, since nothing is actually opened that I can find? I'll try that I guess and hope it doesn't screw something up...

Ayespy

@justintaylor There won't be any windows or tabs launched. These are in the old profile. Is the browser working? If so, you can follow the rest of the refresh profile directions.

justintaylor

@ayespy well, it appears that if I transfer my notes and my bookmarks... both the .bak file and no file extension bookmarks and notes... all my tabs and windows from before open up, of course nothing is logged in any more and all my extensions can't be found. Plus, none of the settings are set the way I had them either for obvious reasons. However, the pages and Vivaldi all seem to work perfectly. Go figure!

What is funny, is I thought the tabs had to do with current tabs and current session files. Obviously that assertion was incorrect.

I'm baffled by the fact that the tabs and windows are all there though, when I do not have the original files loaded other than the four I mentioned above.

So, now I'm sort of playing around to see what files do what when they are removed, just to give me an idea of where things are stored that are important and that are not important. Now I know a lot more than I did when I first posted this question. However, I must honestly say that I'm also completely baffled by what has happened and why certain files with certain names do not appear to be what they say they are... interesting filing system and a bit confusing at that.

Ayespy

@justintaylor You can also transfer the cookies and login data files, and get those back. Also favicons.

justintaylor

@ayespy I thought I should follow up on one more point.

I keep seeing it posted that we should never move anything that deals with our extensions over to the new fresh version of Vivaldi. Well, how is it that Vivaldi reinstalls them without any prompting or assistance on my part?

First, I never moved any files related to extensions into Vivaldi from the previous default file. I've transferred only 6 files: Notes and Bookmarks... including both the .bak file and the no file extension of each... The last two I moved were the Origin Bound Certs and Origin Bound Certs-Journal.
Second, after only moving the above 6 files into the fresh Default folder, I restarted Vivaldi, it contained all my windows and tabs that were open, as stated above.
Third, I never installed any extensions after restarting Vivaldi.
Fourth, overnight two of my extensions reinstalled themselves and opened new tabs asking me to log into them.

After looking around, I did notice that on the Extensions page, I show no images of my extensions, but it does show all the extensions and whether they were checked active or not. Of course I also see blank extension images on the top left of the browser too.

Is there any reason extensions still show up along with tabs and windows, when only transferring those 6 files over from the previous installation and any reason that extensions would begin installing themselves automatically??

I'm just curious is all...

Ayespy

@justintaylor You must have sync turned on.

justintaylor

@ayespy said in Vivaldi comes up as a grey square... will not complete loading.:

@justintaylor You must have sync turned on.

I do NOT have sync turned on... ...I just wish I did.

Prior to one of the last couple of updates, at least 2-3 months ago, I did try and use Sync. However, it only functioned correctly for maybe a week or two at most and then I discovered I had been logged out of sync completely for no reason at all. Despite my best efforts, I was unable to ever log back into sync again either.

So a couple of months ago at least, I just gave up on ever using sync, which to be honest was a bit disconcerting because I want to be able to keep everything backed up, so I don't have to worry about losing settings, bookmarks, and tabs, that take forever to reset, find, or create again if they were to ever get corrupted or lost.

Truth is, ever since the XMarks Extension cloud back up services was shutdown, I've been a little paranoid at losing browser data that does not always get backed up perfectly or even at all, even with Time Machine for my computer or even Google sometimes in my browser. Oh and no, what is happening, is definitely not because of Google either, I have not logged in to anything Google related and I've definitely not used Time Machine to try and restore anything either.

Ayespy

@justintaylor The only thing I could think of that would reinstall extensions is sync.

I suppose its possible a trace indicating you are supposed to have this or that extension could be stored in a configuration file - but if you are following instructions or cleaning profile, etc., you should never copy a configuration file back to the new profile. This is the first I have ever heard of Vivaldi being able to somehow "restore" extensions without sync. One has to wonder if the sync engine is running even though you don't seem to be able to connect. You have a number of somewhat unique and mysterious problems with the browser that we don't see with users in general.