System Windows 11 desktop built by Puget Systems 32 GB RAM NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, 8 GB VRAM Current Lightroom Classic 15.6 release Catalogs and previews on internal SSD; original photographs on internal drives ProblemLightroom Classic has become extremely sluggish and frequently hangs on my Windows 11 desktop. Operations that should be nearly instantaneous can take many seconds or longer. The problem occurs in Library and Develop and makes Lightroom impractical to use.The same photographs and edits perform substantially better in Lightroom Classic on my MacBook Pro Max.Reproduction with a new catalogMy principal aurora catalog contains approximately 76,000 photographs. Initially, I suspected a problem with that catalog or its previews.However, I created an entirely new Lightroom catalog on the Windows desktop and imported a small selection of DNG photographs. Import completed in less than one minute, but the new catalog exhibited the same sluggishness and hangs.A separate, approximately 25,000-photo catalog also performs more slowly than expected.CPU and memory observationsUsing Windows Task Manager and Resource Monitor, I observed: Lightroom consuming approximately 15–16 GB of physical RAM and committing approximately 19–23 GB. Overall system memory utilization reaching approximately 90–93%. On one occasion, Lightroom's memory consumption increased from approximately 1.2 GB to 16 GB within seconds of opening the new test catalog, without any user interaction. Lightroom consuming approximately 40–58% CPU during periods when I was not interacting with it. Lightroom also hanging when overall memory utilization was considerably below 90%, so the problem does not appear to be solely a shortage of available RAM. Lightroom sometimes taking an unusually long time to terminate after being closed. Additional Windows observationResource Monitor itself became unresponsive for approximately five minutes while Lightroom was running. After I exited Lightroom, Resource Monitor operated normally.Windows Task Manager's Analyze Wait Chain function repeatedly showed a Lightroom thread waiting for network I/O. However, temporarily disabling the desktop's network connection did not improve Lightroom's performance.I do not use network drives for the Lightroom catalog or photographs.Troubleshooting already performed Created a brand-new catalog and imported a small selection of photographs — problem persisted. Disabled GPU acceleration — no improvement. Disabled the Excire Search third-party plugin — no improvement. Reset Lightroom preferences — no improvement. Rebooted Windows — no improvement. Temporarily disconnected the computer from the network — no improvement. Examined CPU, RAM, and disk activity in Task Manager and Resource Monitor. Questions for Adobe Is this consistent with any known Lightroom Classic 15.6 performance or memory-management defect currently under investigation? Are there confirmed workarounds for this behavior? What specific diagnostic logs or other information would Adobe engineering find most useful in identifying the cause? I am willing to provide Lightroom System Info, screenshots of Task Manager and Resource Monitor, and additional diagnostic data if requested.

E

ezucker1

Known Participant

Question

Lightroom Classic 15.6 on Windows 11: Severe hangs, excessive memory and CPU usage, even with a new catalog

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System

Windows 11 desktop built by Puget Systems
32 GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, 8 GB VRAM
Current Lightroom Classic 15.6 release
Catalogs and previews on internal SSD; original photographs on internal drives

Problem

Lightroom Classic has become extremely sluggish and frequently hangs on my Windows 11 desktop. Operations that should be nearly instantaneous can take many seconds or longer. The problem occurs in Library and Develop and makes Lightroom impractical to use.

The same photographs and edits perform substantially better in Lightroom Classic on my MacBook Pro Max.

Reproduction with a new catalog

My principal aurora catalog contains approximately 76,000 photographs. Initially, I suspected a problem with that catalog or its previews.

However, I created an entirely new Lightroom catalog on the Windows desktop and imported a small selection of DNG photographs. Import completed in less than one minute, but the new catalog exhibited the same sluggishness and hangs.

A separate, approximately 25,000-photo catalog also performs more slowly than expected.

CPU and memory observations

Using Windows Task Manager and Resource Monitor, I observed:

Lightroom consuming approximately 15–16 GB of physical RAM and committing approximately 19–23 GB.
Overall system memory utilization reaching approximately 90–93%.
On one occasion, Lightroom's memory consumption increased from approximately 1.2 GB to 16 GB within seconds of opening the new test catalog, without any user interaction.
Lightroom consuming approximately 40–58% CPU during periods when I was not interacting with it.
Lightroom also hanging when overall memory utilization was considerably below 90%, so the problem does not appear to be solely a shortage of available RAM.
Lightroom sometimes taking an unusually long time to terminate after being closed.

Additional Windows observation

Resource Monitor itself became unresponsive for approximately five minutes while Lightroom was running. After I exited Lightroom, Resource Monitor operated normally.

Windows Task Manager's Analyze Wait Chain function repeatedly showed a Lightroom thread waiting for network I/O. However, temporarily disabling the desktop's network connection did not improve Lightroom's performance.

I do not use network drives for the Lightroom catalog or photographs.

Troubleshooting already performed

Created a brand-new catalog and imported a small selection of photographs — problem persisted.
Disabled GPU acceleration — no improvement.
Disabled the Excire Search third-party plugin — no improvement.
Reset Lightroom preferences — no improvement.
Rebooted Windows — no improvement.
Temporarily disconnected the computer from the network — no improvement.
Examined CPU, RAM, and disk activity in Task Manager and Resource Monitor.

Questions for Adobe

Is this consistent with any known Lightroom Classic 15.6 performance or memory-management defect currently under investigation?
Are there confirmed workarounds for this behavior?
What specific diagnostic logs or other information would Adobe engineering find most useful in identifying the cause?

I am willing to provide Lightroom System Info, screenshots of Task Manager and Resource Monitor, and additional diagnostic data if requested.

johnrellis

Legend

This is the System Info from my Windows 11 PC:
DirectX: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti (32.0.15.9579)

Adapter #2: Vendor : 8086
Device : 4680

That graphics driver is 8 months old. Download the latest Studio driver from here:

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/details/280102/

When installing, select Nvidia’s clean-install option. It’s recommended by Adobe and safe -- many reports here of people doing that.

You’ve also got an integrated GPU enabled. Adobe recommends disabling it; see steps 5-6:

https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/desktop/technical-support/technical-issues/gpu-issues/troubleshoot-gpu.html#solution-4

This is the System Info from my Dell XPS 17:
DirectX: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop GPU (32.0.15.9608)
Adapter #2: Vendor : 8086
Device : 9a60

That graphics driver is 7 months old. Download the latest Studio driver from here:

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/details/280102/

This computer also has an integrated GPU enabled. Disable it as described above.

This isn’t guaranteed to solve your problems, but updating to the latest graphics drivers and disabling second GPUs is always one of the first troubleshooting steps, since outdated drivers have proven to be one of the leading source of problems reported here.

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E

ezucker1Author

Known Participant

John, I performed a clean installation of NVIDIA Studio Driver 617.42 on the Puget (RTX 3070 Ti), replacing driver 595.79. Unfortunately, it made no noticeable improvement in Lightroom Classic 15.6.

Testing with the same 1,000-photo catalog, Lightroom again became extremely sluggish and effectively unusable. CPU usage climbed to approximately 80%, while Lightroom's memory consumption progressively increased from about 1.4 GB to 6.2 GB.

Subsequently, Lightroom's memory consumption reached approximately 16.7 GB, while CPU usage dropped to just 4%. Despite the low CPU usage, Lightroom remained unusable.

These are essentially the same symptoms I experienced before the clean driver installation. The problem persists even with a small, newly created catalog.

Given that the clean NVIDIA installation did not help, and that the Dell developed similar problems immediately after upgrading Lightroom from 15.3 to 15.6, I'd appreciate any further suggestions about what might be causing this behavior.

Incidentally, the NVIDIA driver link you provided (280102) lists only notebook GPUs under Supported Products. I located the corresponding desktop driver (280101), which explicitly lists the RTX 3070 Ti, and used that for the clean installation.

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dj_paige

Legend

It seems you did not try the suggestion from @johnrellis that you should disable the integrated GPU. This has helped a lot of people with similar problems.

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johnrellis

Legend

Did you do a clean install of the latest Nvidia Studio driver?

Please do the LR menu command Help > System Info, click the Copy button in the upper right corner, and paste into your reply here, so we can see exactly which versions of hardware and software LR thinks you're running and important LR options that are set.

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ezucker1Author

Known Participant

Update — October 26, 2026

I have conducted additional troubleshooting on my Dell XPS 17 (Intel Core i9-11900H, 32 GB RAM, NVIDIA RTX 3060, Windows 11).

Lightroom Classic 15.3 was previously working satisfactorily on this computer, including after importing 1,007 DNG photographs.

I subsequently upgraded to Lightroom Classic 15.6, which proved unusably sluggish. Downgrading to 15.3 did not restore the previous performance.

As an additional diagnostic test, I created a new Windows local user account and launched Lightroom with a fresh catalog under that account. I successfully imported 231 DNG photographs, but Lightroom continued exhibiting severe performance problems.

These results are particularly concerning because Lightroom 15.3 had worked before the upgrade, and the problems persisted after reverting to that version and testing under a separate Windows account.

After extensive troubleshooting, I have been unable to restore Lightroom Classic to a usable state on this computer.

I am reporting these additional findings in the hope that Adobe can identify what changed during the upgrade and why reverting to the previously working version did not resolve the problem.

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CORCTON34033231

Community Expert

Hi, and thanks for the exceptionally thorough report — a fresh catalog, GPU off, third-party plug-in disabled, and a preferences reset already cover several of Adobe's official first-line steps, so that isolation work is genuinely useful.

For this kind of symptom (hangs with very high CPU and memory use), Adobe's official troubleshooting steps are the following — worth trying in the order the performance guide lists them:

1. Update the graphics driver — install the latest driver directly from NVIDIA (clean install), then retest.

2. If sync is enabled, pause 'Sync With Lightroom' while testing (syncing consumes CPU and system resources).

3. Optimize the catalog: File > Optimize Catalog.

4. Purge the Camera Raw cache (Edit > Preferences > File Handling > Purge Cache); the guide also suggests trying a larger cache size (10 GB or more).

5. Confirm "Automatically write changes into XMP" is off (Catalog Settings > Metadata).

6. Close unnecessary applications/startup items and temporarily disable real-time antivirus/security scanning, then retest.

7. Install any pending Windows OS updates.

Full guide: https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/desktop/technical-support/performance-guidelines/optimize-performance-lightroom.html

I can't confirm whether this matches a known 15.6 defect or promise a fix, but your report is filed in the right place (Bug Reports) for the Lightroom team to pick up. If you work through the steps, noting which ones you've tried will help anyone following along.

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ezucker1Author

Known Participant

Thank you for your response and suggestions.

Several of the recommended troubleshooting steps have already been addressed:

Graphics acceleration: As noted in my original report, I disabled Lightroom's GPU acceleration without improvement. I have not performed a clean reinstall of the NVIDIA driver.
Lightroom Sync: I do not use Lightroom Sync.
Catalog optimization: I have optimized my existing catalogs repeatedly. More importantly, the problem also occurs with a brand-new catalog containing a small number of photographs.
Camera Raw cache: My cache is already configured for 50 GB, substantially exceeding Adobe's recommendation. I have not purged it, although I understand that doing so could rule out corrupted cached data.
Automatic XMP writing: I reset Lightroom's preferences and created a new catalog. Since automatic XMP writing is disabled by default, it should not be enabled in that catalog.
Background applications and security software: I have not yet systematically tested Lightroom with real-time security scanning and other background applications disabled.
Windows updates: Windows 11 is fully updated.

The most striking finding remains Lightroom's behavior with the new catalog. Without any user interaction, Lightroom's memory consumption increased from approximately 1.2 GB to 16 GB within seconds, accompanied at times by substantial CPU activity. This seems difficult to explain through ordinary catalog maintenance, cache sizing, or synchronization.

I also understand that Adobe is investigating reports of excessive memory consumption and unresponsiveness in Lightroom Classic 15.6, although those reports may involve different triggering operations.

Given the troubleshooting already performed, I would particularly appreciate knowing whether Adobe engineering recognizes these symptoms as a possible software defect and whether there is a specific diagnostic procedure that could help identify the underlying cause.

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johnrellis

Legend

[View this post in your web browser. It contains formatting and images that don't appear in email.]

“I disabled Lightroom's GPU acceleration without improvement.”

This is not dispositive. LR uses the graphics driver and GPU even with Preferences > Performance > Use Graphics Processor disabled.

“I have not performed a clean reinstall of the NVIDIA driver.”

I first troubleshooting step is to always ensure you have the latest Nvidia Studio driver, and to do a clean install -- this has resolved many, many issues reported in this forum.

You can download the latest Studio driver for the RTX 3070 Ti from here:

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/details/280102/

See here for details on doing a clean Nvidia install:

https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/desktop/technical-support/technical-issues/gpu-issues/troubleshoot-gpu.html#solution-4

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