Lightroom 6 refuses to start / freezes on start

I think Adobe is forcing it to crash/close. When I purchased Adobe Photoshop Elements 2021 and installed it, Adobe installed a whole lot unnecssary garbage. After that, Lightroom stopped working. I since then re-installed Lightroom, and ended up at the same problem. I would start it, it would come up, then it would suddenly close. Well, if I disable my network interface, turns out Lightroom will start up and run just fine.

To me this suggests that Lightroom is probably checking the license server (I am licensed and it shows I am licensed on Adobe's web site), and adobe is responding with something that causes it to die. No error messages, no warnings, no diaglogs. Just closes, and closes gracefully, not a crash. The conspiracy theorist in me says Adobe is doing it on purpose to try and force upgrades to their cloud, which I do not want and will never purchase. I use the product like twice a month at most. Why would I subscribe to something I would barely use. I'll switch to something like ON1, Luminar, or RawTherapee before I purchase their cloud BS. I legitimately purchased this software, as a standalone product, and I should be able to use it. 

Using this you should be able to install any previous LR release, just download the proper 'base' + 'update' you desire.

I had slightly different problem, not able to get latest LR update through Creative Cloud, but instead getting even older, baseline LR6 release when did reinstall through CC app.

To get the latest version properly installed I tried the Adobe chat help.

But that's useless, took them 2h to guide me through various steps and then finishing the support saying "if the problem not resolve on it's own. please contact us in 12h again". As a paying CC subscriber, you got unqualified support from Adobe, unable to resolve problems with software which Adobe created, and you're on your own.

So based on what Adobe chat gave me, and multiple other internet sources I put together these steps which finally worked for me to get the latest LR installed.

Here you go:

1. go to https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/kb/lightroom-downloads.html
   • download the full LR installation pack (~700MB)
   • download the update file fo the LR release you want to get to
2. uninstall your current LR intallation
3. install the initial full LR pack (first download ~700MB)
4. if you try to install the update now you will get error saying something in sense that you're not allowed/entitle to upgrade.
   • Go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\AAMUpdaterInventory\1.0
   • Find AdobeUpdaterAdminPrefs.dat
   • Delete (or rename) this file
   • This is Windows path, so if you have Mac just google location of this file.
5. Now the update installation will work.

BTW Adobe: your editor on this forum sucks, jumping up & down across the whole page when typing text, or suing home/end buttons.. you can't get even this right?!

I have exactly the same issue, mine is the full standalone version, after purchase it ran fine for a few weeks, twice in the last two days it has pulled the loading screen freeze, with Lightroom not responding and no option but to close or wait.  The only way around it is to re-install over the top.  no other option, this is shocking to be honest and even more shocking that Adobe appear to have done nothing to address the issue, if anyone finds a simple solution I await with baited breath.

I have this problem too.  Have uninstalled / deleted the old version and downloaded the latest version of Lightroom, deleted catalogs, caches, disabled the plug-ins and switched off graphics accelerators.  I have a solid state drive so it's not the "disk spinning down". 

This is bulls**t. 

In the past, I would install software on my machine, never update it and it always worked without a problem. This "cloud" crap that constantly installs unstable updates which chew up my data allowance, slow my machine down and cause the application to stop working for weeks / months at a time until a fix is released is a disgrace.

I had the same issue as most of you.  Here is how I was able to resolve this issue.

1) I went to the cache folder in Lightroom..SLCache C:\Program Files(x86)\Comman Files\Adobe

2) Opened the folder

3) Deleted the contents

4) Started Lightroom

5) Lightroom displayed authentication window for trial or license

6) Selected License

7) Dialog displays input for license key

8) Entered my Serial Number...(license key...or whatever's it's called

9) Relaunched Lightroom without loading previous catalog ( I locked the drive so it couldn't access it).. May not be nexcess art at this point

10) Lightroom was now behaving.  Reloaded working catalog...so far so good for the last 15 hours...have backed up and relaunched without issues since then.

Mark

Yeah, I'm in the same boat. Full install and it just locks up my PC and have to do a hard reboot.

Ready to kill the planet. Just want my money back at this point. Never had this problem with adobe products but support has made me hate this product. Absolute shit. Just want my money back.

upgrade seems to have solved it. startup freeze also came right after trail period for cloud/mobile was over with LR6. seems to work now after upgrade from here: Keeping Lightroom Up-to-Date

I had the warning message 'this action cannot be completed because the other program is busy...'

Reinstalled LR6 with Preferences retained. However, I then noticed that the cardreader (set to autoload) had 2 cards in it. They were removed & LR works fine. The card conflict was probably the cause of my issue.

I did what Pete said and installed the latest upgrade and it did the trick.

My Lightroom 6.0 stand alone was locking up on the start screen and as soon as I installed the 6.3 upgrade, Lightroom started right up no problem.

I completely removed LR6 (NOT CC), deleted all preferences, deleted the C:\user\[me]\Pictures folder and re-installed LR6. It still fails with the error "Lightroom has stopped working". This installation is on an ASUS laptop, w/touchscreen, model X200MA, with Intel built-in (on-chip) HD graphics running Windows 10 Pro. LR6 does not get past the splash screen, so I cannot tell it to stop using graphics hardware. I have already turned off hw acceleration in Device Manager. I have spoken with ASUS support and they do not have a newer display driver.

LR6 was running just fine on this machine when I first upgraded from Win 7 to Win 10, but now it fails. It seems to me that an update from Microsoft has caused this problem, but LR6 still runs fine on my desktop (my license allows using it on 2 machines as long as it is not in use on both at the same time.)

My next attempt will be all the above changes PLUS removing the appdata/roaming/Adobe lightroom data entries. I have to be careful not to remove Adobe AIR because another app uses it.

UPDATE: Removing ALL folders & files related to ANY version of LR + uninstalling LR and re-installing did not help. It opened and asked for a place to put the catalog (I selected the default location), but it died as usual

UPDATE 2: Selecting a different location (my documents) for the catalog did not change anything.