<Solved> Can't download anything on Vivaldi (version 4.1.2369.21 stable)

Hello everyone, it's been a while since I've had to ask for help about this stuff, gladly I remembered about Guru3D, there always seems to be someone who knows what to do in this forum.

I haven't been able to download ANYTHING on Vivaldi. I start the download, get the Save / Save As / Open prompt, tried with different paths, but to no avail. The downloads "start" and stay at 0 bytes forever. This started suddenly, no hardware change, no new software has been installed and no software has been uninstalled.

I followed the instructions I found on Reddit and other forums regarding this same problem, which consists of cleaning your current user profile (yes, every password, website, bookmarks, everything is just gone) and that seemed to fix the problem for most people, but not for me, the problem persists. At best I can drag and drop images to a folder or the desktop, but that's only for images, I still have .rars and .pdfs I need to read and parse through and those can't be "downloaded" this way.

I am at a loss here, this is the workplace computer and I need to download several files daily, and Vivaldi has a TON of features I make good use of. Starting over in a new browser, again, would be very troublesome. Any help or new insights aside from cleaning your Vivaldi user profile would be greatly appreciated.

PC Specs:
- i7 860 2.80GHz
- 4GB DDR3 Single-channel 664MHz
- ATI AMD Radeon HD 5450 (XFX)
- Windows 7 Home Premium

 

make sure your storaga quota isn't used up.
https://helpdeskgeek.com/how-to/set-disk-quotas-in-windows/

Recently avast and other protection suites are behaving similarly to controlled folder access and only allowing white listed applications to write into the user folders.

 

The storage quota wasn't even turned on in the first place, so that's probably not it.
But since you mentioned Avast, I tried turning protection off for 10 minutes and tried downloading stuff. Guess what? It worked!
But as soon as I turn it back on I can't download anything anymore. This is very concerning since I've been using Vivaldi on this PC for the past 7 months and never had any issues like that and now, out of nowhere, Avast decided there's a problem with Vivaldi writing into my disk.

I have now added Vivaldi as an exception in Avast but still, it seems to be blocking my downloads. Any idea of what I could do?

 

You want to add it to the Allowed and Blocklist rather than as an exception in the AV scanner.

https://support.avast.com/en-au/article/298/

Or simply disable protection of the downloads folder
https://support.avast.com/en-au/article/Use-Antivirus-Ransomware-Shield/

• Smart Mode (default and recommended setting): Ransomware Shield refers to a list of commonly used and trusted applications to determine which applications can modify files in your protected folders. If any applications that are not in this list attempt to modify files in your protected folders, you are notified and asked for permission.
• Strict Mode: If any applications attempt to modify files in your protected folders, you are notified and asked for permission every time (excluding those you have already added to the Blocked & Allowed apps lists). Selecting this option may result in frequent and potentially obtrusive alerts.

• You cannot save files using an editing application: Ensure the application you are using is not in your Blocked Apps list. Alternatively, you can add the application to your Allowed Apps list.

 

It worked! Thank you very much!!
Weird that it would suddenly start blocking it without asking or giving a heads up.