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phillipf3108838
phillipf3108838
Participant
September 24, 2025
Answered

Lightroom classic fails to start and is driving me insane

  • September 24, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 198 views

Please help.

Lightroom takes and age to open, or doesn't open and gets stuck on the start up and won't get further than the start up screen, if I'm lucky enough to get to editing, when I choose and work with masks, more often than not LR crashes and freezes the whole computer giving me no choice but to hold down the power button to reset the entire laptop. 

 

I have an ASUS pro art p16, AMD Ryzen AI9HX, 2 TB drive with 933GB used, 32GB Ram 8GB dedicated graphics  and the card is an Nvidia GTX4070, Its about 6 months old. Windows 11.

 

I have a download speed of 15.4MB/s, i have no idea if this is enough.

 

My lightroom is up to date, the latest version, catalogue has 1200 photo's in it.

 

Anybody got any ideas why its not working for me. Its getting depressing as I would like to actually do some editing, I switched computers as my old HP omen was getting slow but having recently booted that back up again it has over 1800 photos on it and is lower spec'd than my ASUS pro art but always seems to load LR striaght away and quicker than my ASUS which is designed for this exact purpose.

 

Any help would be gratefully appreciated.

 

Many thanks 

 

Phill

    Correct answer Claire H.

    Hi @phillipf3108838, thanks for reaching out! Let's try a few things to figure out this issue.
    1. Disable GPU Acceleration: Go to Edit > Preferences > Performance and uncheck “Use Graphics Processor”. This can prevent crashes during masking.

    2. Reset Lightroom Preferences: Please take a look at this Helpx article for steps. https://adobe.ly/3HsQXpA It is recommended that you back up your catalog before resetting preferences. You can take a look at this article for more information:  https://adobe.ly/4dW8vqF.

    3. Optimize Your Catalog: Use File> Optimize Catalog to improve performance.
    4. Roll Back GPU Drivers: Recent Nvidia drivers can cause issues. You can try using an older Nvidia Studio Driver to test if that is the issue.

     

    Also, could you double-check for Windows Updates and make sure your system is fully updated? If none of these steps work for you, we can try a reinstall. I hope this helps! ^CH

    2 replies

    dj_paige
    dj_paige
    Legend
    February 10, 2026

    Well maybe that’s the correct answer above. When the whole computer crashes, the problem is either a bad driver or a hardware malfunction. So skip to #4 and try a more recent driver, and even an older driver.

     

    If that’s not the solution, then you need to diagnose your computer for hardware malfunctions.

    phillipf3108838
    phillipf3108838Author
    Participant
    February 10, 2026

    Thanks, I have the most recent driver installed which was updated Jan 5th Nvidia 591.74, Prior to that I had the most up to date driver (Nvidia 577 released July 22 2025. and there was still this issue of Lightroom either not opening, to lagging to crashing completely.

     

    I am unsure whether/what driver was before that and whether I can get hold of it?

     

    Claire H.
    Community Manager
    Claire H.Community ManagerCorrect answer
    Community Manager
    September 24, 2025

    Hi @phillipf3108838, thanks for reaching out! Let's try a few things to figure out this issue.
    1. Disable GPU Acceleration: Go to Edit > Preferences > Performance and uncheck “Use Graphics Processor”. This can prevent crashes during masking.

    2. Reset Lightroom Preferences: Please take a look at this Helpx article for steps. https://adobe.ly/3HsQXpA It is recommended that you back up your catalog before resetting preferences. You can take a look at this article for more information:  https://adobe.ly/4dW8vqF.

    3. Optimize Your Catalog: Use File> Optimize Catalog to improve performance.
    4. Roll Back GPU Drivers: Recent Nvidia drivers can cause issues. You can try using an older Nvidia Studio Driver to test if that is the issue.

     

    Also, could you double-check for Windows Updates and make sure your system is fully updated? If none of these steps work for you, we can try a reinstall. I hope this helps! ^CH

    phillipf3108838
    phillipf3108838Author
    Participant
    October 3, 2025

    That is great thank you for your help.

     

    Phill

    Ian Lyons
    Community Expert
    Ian LyonsCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    October 3, 2025

    @phillipf3108838 

     

    Is your issue resolved?

     

    If yes, then which of the four options outlined by @Claire H.  fixed the problem? Providing such information may help others in the future.

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