johnymacclen last edited by

That looping identity confirmation is a known pain after a fresh Windows install. The key thing to understand: formatting wiped the local encryption key the old Windows installation used to protect the password vault, so Sync can no longer unlock it on its own. That is why bookmarks come through fine while the passwords stay locked — Sync can see the encrypted data but cannot decrypt it, hence the cryptographer error and the "Needs passphrase" flag.

A few things worth trying before you go near any reset option:

1. In the sync settings on the laptop, make sure password syncing is actually ticked, then log out of your Opera account inside the browser, close Opera completely, and log back in. A fresh login often breaks the loop where the confirmation tab just closes.

2. When the confirmation prompt appears, try the password your Opera account had around the time the vault was created, not necessarily the current one — the vault may have been encrypted under an older password.

3. Check opera://sync-internals after each attempt. While it still says "Needs passphrase", the vault is locked and no local step will reveal the passwords.

Honest heads-up: if none of the passwords you can remember unlocks it, and there is no other device holding the original data, those passwords cannot be recovered without resetting the synced passwords on the server. That reset only clears the passwords, not the bookmarks — but you would have to save them again. So it is worth a proper effort on the password attempts first.

If you do get it unlocked, consider setting a custom sync passphrase and keeping it somewhere safe — it makes surviving the next reinstall far less painful.