[FIX] Vivaldi 5.2 Startup Crash

dvincent

Hello there everyone! I see a lot of people are having startup crashes in the latest 5.2 releases (stable and snapshot). I have found a fix that does not require you to uninstall/downgrade Vivaldi (and not lose your tabs and settings).

The bug occures when you try to open Vivaldi window that has tabs which have received data via POST. Those are the tabs that normally would show "Confirm Form Resubmission" dialogue or warning, what now leads to a crash. Think of any websites with entry forms, search engines like Startpage, etc.

Vivaldi 5.2.2623.24 and older -- WORKS FINE.
Vivaldi 5.2.2623.34 and newer -- ALL CRASH when "Form resubmission" is requested.

To fix this you will need a second Windows user account or a second computer. The process is very easy:

TLDR:

Install Vivaldi 5.1 on your secondary machine.
Copy the Sessions folder inside C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Vivaldi\User Data\Default from your main machine to your secondary machine.
Open Vivaldi 5.1, and close all tabs that request "Confirm form resubmission" and/or use POST method.
Copy the Sessions folder back to your main machine, start Vivaldi, enjoy.

Detailed step-by-step instruction:

Make sure Vivaldi is closed and not running in background.
Go to C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Vivaldi\User Data\Default
Rename the Sessions folder to Sessions_CRASH.
Now switch to your second computer (or Windows account).
If newest Vivaldi is already installed there, uninstall it. You can keep the data.
Download Vivaldi 5.1 from official source: https://vivaldi.com/download/archive/?platform=win .
Disconnect your second computer from internet.
Install Vivaldi 5.1, keep all settings at default. When done, exit Vivaldi and make sure it's not running in background.
Still on your second computer, go to C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Vivaldi\User Data\Default and delete the Sessions folder.
Copy the Sessions_CRASH folder from your main computer to here, and rename it to Sessions.
Open Vivaldi 5.1. All your tabs will be recovered, including pinned state, grouping, etc.
Make sure you go through each and every tab, and manually close every tab that requests "Form resubmission". You can copy the URLs to Notepad if you want to remember them. If you have lots of tabs, just quickly Ctrl+Tab through all of them (in tab order). "Confirm form resubmission" warning will be visually distinctive from "No internet" error.
Exit Vivaldi and make sure it's not running in background.
Rename the Sessions folder to Sessions_NOCRASH.
Now switch back to your main computer (or account).
On your main computer, go to C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Vivaldi\User Data\Default.
Copy the Sessions_NOCRASH folder from your second computer to here, and rename it to Sessions.
Open Vivaldi 5.2. The browser will not crash and all your tabs and settings will be there
If it all worked out fine and your problem is solved, you can delete the Sessions_CRASH folder. Or you can keep it as a backup, whatever you prefer.
Hope that Vivaldi team will release a fix before another website requests you to "Confirm form resubmission" upon browser startup

Of course, you can also just "downgrade" Vivaldi on your main machine, but that requires uninstalling Vivaldi 5.2, so you risk losing your settings and data. Using the above "surgical" approach you will keep all your settings and tabs (except for the ones causing trouble).

Hope this helps!

dvincent

Also, in the meantime before an official fix is released, I recommend upgrading to the latest Vivaldi 5.2 snapshot 2643.3, as it already includes many previously reported crash fixes.

dvincent

Alternative workaround (did not work in my case, but worked for some people):

@benni1990 said in Browser crashes on startup:

Weird but working hack to get Vivaldi to open again:
Force Vivaldi to open a link (e.g. from an email or a document).

This opens a new tab before the problematic tab has any chance to interfere.
Not sure why this works ....

Tried on Vivaldi 5.2.2623.34-1, Fedora 35, Gnome 41, 5.16.18-200.fc35.x86_64

Hope this might help anyone

dvincent

Official Vivaldi Team response:

@pafflick said in Browser crashes on startup:

It looks like there are at least two common factors for the recent crashes - opening a dialogue and sending data via POST. The former should've been fixed with the recent update, but the latter is still occurring, unfortunately. If one of your tabs contains a page that received some data via POST, you might still experience a crash when trying to restore it.
We'll try to get the fix ready as soon as possible, but It might not be here until the next week due to the holiday break. Sorry about that.

Skiphorine

@dvincent Is there anyway to edit a session so we can get rid of the offending tab that way?

dvincent

@skiphorine Yes. You can edit your session by installing a special session-editor called Vivaldi 5.1

All jokes aside, you cannot edit the session files using other software, like Notepad, if that is what you meant.