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LR Classic (current version) wont open on Windows 11 PC

Forum|Forum|1 month ago
June 17, 2026
14 replies
172 views

It works fine for a few days and then won’t open. Task Manager says it is running but I see nothing. What gives?

I should mention my catalog is huge … don’t know if that has anything to do with it.

Correct answer Rob_Cullen

I have just had a similar problem- Nothing starts visibly except for intense hard-drive activity. No error messages. Repeat clicking of the LrC start icon results in multiple listings of LrC in Task Manager.

For some reason (went for a cuppa?) I let it continue with its disk activity thinking it might be a scheduled backup and eventually after about 10-15minutes it finally opened my catalog.

Since then the catalog has been opening and closing as normal, or even faster to open.

So I don’t have any answers and cannot explain what happened. These glitches are sent to try us!

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KR Seals

Community Expert

I upgraded LrC to V 15.4 on my main Win11 machine yesterday after testing the upgrade on both my MacBook Pro and backup Win11.

The upgrade went smoothly and the V 15.3.1 catalog was successfully zipped and save in the Old Catalogs Folder. Everything ran ok when the newly upgraded catalog was opened for the first time. Then, after closing LrC and attempting to restart with the 15.4 catalog, I got the same indications as @crockny64 and @Rob_Cullen. There was no visible response when I clicked on the LrC icon. Based on their comments, I checked in Task Manager and noticed that LrC was running as a Background Process with CPU, Memory and Disk activity. I decided to let it go and see what happened. I took a dinner break and watched some of the YouTube videos on V15.4 so it was a couple of hours later when I came back to the machine to see LrC up and running. LrC was also now running as an App in Task Manager.

Since that, I have tried opening and closing LrC several times. It’s now starting and quitting properly. It seems the previews are loading much quicker under 15.4.

Ken Seals - Nikon Z 9, Z 8, 14mm-800mm. Computer Win 11 Pro, I7-14700K, 64GB, RTX3070TI. Travel machine: 2021 MacBook Pro M1 MAX 64GB. All Adobe apps.

KR Seals

Community Expert

Your symptoms are just like I had when a new set of ram was defective causing the catalog to be corrupted. I’m not saying your issue is related to ram, only to a possibly corrupt catalog. Be sure any .lock file in the Lightroom Classic folder is deleted, then try a backup catalog.

Ken Seals - Nikon Z 9, Z 8, 14mm-800mm. Computer Win 11 Pro, I7-14700K, 64GB, RTX3070TI. Travel machine: 2021 MacBook Pro M1 MAX 64GB. All Adobe apps.

dennisb94569757

Known Participant

I am very upset with the Adobe Customer Care team. I spent many hours on the phone with several different members of the team. They were cluless regarding this problem. Do you have faith in them? Do you use them?

Rob_Cullen

Correct answer

Community Expert

I have just had a similar problem- Nothing starts visibly except for intense hard-drive activity. No error messages. Repeat clicking of the LrC start icon results in multiple listings of LrC in Task Manager.

For some reason (went for a cuppa?) I let it continue with its disk activity thinking it might be a scheduled backup and eventually after about 10-15minutes it finally opened my catalog.

Since then the catalog has been opening and closing as normal, or even faster to open.

So I don’t have any answers and cannot explain what happened. These glitches are sent to try us!

Regards. My System: Windows-11, Lightroom-Classic 15.4.1, Photoshop 27.8, ACR 18.4, Lightroom 9.4, Lr-iOS 10.4.0, Bridge 16.0.3 .

C

crockny64Author

Participating Frequently

I have left it alone and come back to nothing … maybe I needed to wait longer …. so frustrating that this program I have come to depend on is so buggy ...

C

crockny64Author

Participating Frequently

I waited 45 minutes after “opening” it and it came up today …. Geesh.

dj_paige

Legend

If Task Manager “says it is running”, then end the task using Task Manager. Right-click where it says Adobe Lightroom and then select “End Task”. Wait a minute or two and try opening LrC.

C

crockny64Author

Participating Frequently

Thats an endless loop …doesn’t work

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