Using Selenium Opera Driver doesn't start my test execution

Question

I am able to open the Opera browser using Selenium Opera driver. But I am unable to navigate to any URL using: driver.get("www.google.com");

Opera driver starts and doesn't load the given link.

-- Adding the failure trace from comments:

org.openqa.selenium.WebDriverException:
com.opera.core.systems.scope.exceptions.ResponseNotReceivedException: 
No response in a timely fashion Build info: version: '2.28.0', revision: '18309', time: '2012-12-11 20:21:18' System info: os.name: 'Windows XP', os.arch: 'x86', os.version: '5.1', java.version: '1.7.0_02' Driver info: driver.version: OperaDriver Build info: version: '2.28.0', revision: '18309', time: '2012-12-11 20:21:18' System info: os.name: 'Windows XP', os.arch: 'x86', os.version: '5.1', java.version: '1.7.0_02'

Answer 1

I wrote installation instructions for watir-webdriver: Opera with watir-webdriver on XP. It was a while ago, but as far as I remember on Windows XP I had to install Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package (x86).