Opera to Go: How to Install Opera on a USB Thumb Drive

By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

Browsers have been back in the new again ever since FireFox kicked IE around the block with some simple but effective performance tweaks. Then there was the portable version of FireFox that let you take your bookmarks and browser setting with you on simple thumb drive. Meanwhile Opera announced it was now available for free, so today for those who have FireFox on a stick envy, here’s way to load up Opera on a USB thumb drive and have your own Portable Opera.

After this procedure you have Opera.bat which you should run when ever your drive letter changes. It will update all necessary files and start Opera. The folder I installed Opera is DRIVE:\Opera . If you want to install to a different directory you’ll have to edit the Opera.bat

1) Install Opera in single user mode into the \Opera folder
2) Download XChangeCL from http://www.simes.clara.co.uk/programs/xchangecl.htm
3) Place XChangeCL.exe into DRIVE:\Opera\utils directory
5) Delete all drive letters from \Opera\profile\opera6.ini
(example: change “Opera Directory=D:\Opera\profile” to “Opera Directory=\Opera\profile”)
6) Replace all drive letters from \Opera\OperaDef6.ini with HaKeMiStO (example: BUTTON SET=HaKeMiStOOpera\skin\Standard.zip) . It’s Finnish. Don’t worry about it, a batch file will replace it later.
7) Move OperaDef6.ini to \Opera\utils\ directory
8) Make \Opera\Opera.bat (Open notepad, write the following code and save it as Opera.bat) It will make you a fresh OperaDef6.ini file and start Opera when ever you run it.

@echo offcd \copy /Y \Opera\utils\OperaDef6.ini \Opera\OperaDef6.ini \Opera\utils\xchangecl -B \Opera\OperaDef6.ini /HaKeMiStO/%cd%/start /max \Opera\Opera.exe

Hope this is of use to someone. I personally just love my new portable Opera. I’m happy to answer any questions you might have. Source: Opera Community on My.Opera.com via Digg

Alice Adds: And if you want to be completely portable, don’t forget you can load Windows XP on a 256MB stick and take that with you too.