Known Participant

Question

P: Catalog migration stuck while upgrading to LrC v15

Forum|Forum|3 months ago
October 28, 2025
9 replies
2059 views

Hello,

Not sure this is a bug, but worth posting here to get your feedback.

My catalog contains about 400k images and videos.

In the last months, its size increased a lot from about 7GB in Nov 2024 up to almost 39GB now; just before the upgrade to LrC v15.

I ran the LrC upgrade this morning (7-8 hours ago). The software upgrade went well in a few minutes, with all other Adobe upgrades, then the catalog migration started.

Since that time, I get the catalog upgrade message with no change since the beginning. See attached screenshot. It says "Not responding" since the beginning as well.

I wxanted to understand what's going on, so I looked at the folder where my catalog is stored. The previous catalog v14 has been backued up in a separate folder "Old Lightroom Catalogs" that I then moved to a separate drive. I can also see a temporaryRepairedCatalogue.lrcat growing slowly, very slowly. Its size is now about 2GB. That's means the catalog upgrade is actually processing, but it is so slow!

At the current speed, and assuming the new catalog will have about the same size as the current one, it will require more than 5 days to get it upgraded! If nothing fails...

Note that the catalog is stored on a pretty fast NVME drive.

Does any of you encounter this issue?

What can I do, except waiting?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Denis

Windows

F

Flawless_heart6298

Participant

Hi I know how annoying it can be when the catalog migration just gets stuck while upgrading to LrC v15 Sometimes it happens if the catalog is really big or if some previews are corrupted. A trick that often helps is to optimize your catalog in the older version first and make sure all your files aren’t locked or read-only. Also, having enough disk space and letting the migration run without interruptions can make a difference. Do you see it getting stuck at a certain point or with specific files?

S

steved86639488

Participant

Lightroom classic v15.0 installed automatically. When I try to start it, it wants to upgrade my catalog and fails. The recommendation is to remove the *.lrcat.lock file which I've done, but that has no effect.

I've also tried to open Lightroom Classic from my most recent backup and that fails as well.

I'm using a Windows PC running Windows 10 home Version 22H2 build 19045.6456

I'd like to take a step back to the previous version.

Any suggestions welcome.

O

Odile5FD8

Participant

J'ai réessayé de charger mon catalogue dans Lightroom Classic V15, après téléchargemetn san sproblème de la V15 Mais il refuse de mettre à jour mon catalogue qui marchait parfaitement dans la toute dernière V14...

Pouvez vous me renvoyer la dernière version LRC en V14 pour Windows 10 ?

dj_paige

Legend

You can re-install LrC 14.5.1 via these instructions:

https://helpx.adobe.com/download-install/apps/download-install-apps/creative-cloud-apps/install-previous-versions-creative-cloud-apps.html

After you reinstall LrC 14.5.1, you might want to try this trick to help your catalog be converted to LrC 15. Create a new catalog (File->New Catalog) and then import your existing catalog into that new catalog (File->Import From Another Catalog). Note: you will lose your publish services this way, they will have to be re-created. Then try converting this new catalog into LrC 15.

Srishti Bali

Community Manager

Hi @Stef M. Thank you for sharing these details. I’ve forwarded them to the team, but they’ll need a bit more information to investigate further.

@Stef M. @DenisPac @Frederick Jansohn @KR Seals @Antoni Serrano If any one of you is still experiencing this issue, please share your Catalog files (.lrcat and .lrcat-data files) — this will help us better understand the problem. Upload it to any cloud service like Google Drive or Dropbox and share the link here. If you’re not comfortable sharing the catalog publicly, you can send it via DM instead. Just click on my name to open my profile, and you’ll see an option to send Message there.

KR Seals

Community Expert

@Srishti Bali I'm hoping the users with this issue will get it resolved. In my case, I have updated LrC on two Win11 computers and a M1 MBP MAX. All upgrades went perfectly. All of my normal operations in LrC are working properly.

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.

Srishti Bali

Community Manager

Hi @DenisPac

Thanks for confirming! I’ve shared your feedback with the team for future updates. Please feel free to reach out if you have any other questions.

Regards,

Srishti

Frederick Jansohn

Participating Frequently

Hi Sameer,

While I already had posted an inquiry I'm not sure its conents are totally relevant any longer. When attempting today to open up Lightroom Classic v. 14 I got the surprise (to me) screen prompting me to upgrading to LrC v.15. After some minor research around upgrading I hit the "upgrade" button. As of writing that was about 3 hours ago. Eventually the program tried to load but only a small screen, box like, appeared in the upper left of my computer monitor screen. It was a partial view of the first screen from which editing takes place in LrC, showing a partial view of a number of images in the film strip of the last set of images I had edited just two days ago. This was accompanied by the "dreaded" blue status circle going round and round endlessly. Finally I saw at the top of this partial view of the LrC developer screen the words (Not responding). This was after I had tried to maximise the view by hitting the minimise/maximise button. I then clicked on the red button in the upper right hand corner and I got the error message "the program is not responding" and prompted me to either close or wait for a response. I'm actually still waiting (3 hours later) and now still seeing the "Not Responding" message. It seems that in trying to upgrade itself the program is frozen leaving me with nothing with which to edit recent photos. I am at a complete loss as to know what to do or how to do it. Can you help please? Look forward to your speediest reply. Many thanks in advance, Cheers, Fred Jansohn

AxelMatt

Community Expert

@Frederick Jansohn

You’ve reactivated an old thread. You describe your issue. Also, you're not giving us any information about your system and what you've tried so far. It may seem like it's the same problem, but it may not be.

I've branched your post into a new thread.

First try to reset the preferences of Lightroom Classic: How to reset Lightroom Classic preferences (adobe.com)

It's recommended to backup your preferences before you reset the preferences to the default settings:

https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/kb/preference-file-and-other-file-locations.html

If this doesn't help we need more informations about your environment.

Is your system up-to-date? Do you have installed all recent updates and patches for the operating system and the device drivers, especially the graphic driver. Please make also sure that you have installed the Studio version and not the Game Ready version of your NVidia driver.

My System: Intel i7-8700K - 64GB RAM - NVidia Geforce RTX 3060 - Windows 11 Pro 25H2 -- LR-Classic 15 - Photoshop 27 - Nik Collection 8 - PureRAW 5 - Topaz Photo

Srishti Bali

Community Manager

Hi @DenisPac

Thanks for reaching out, and apologies for the experience. We’ve received similar reports from other users, and in most cases, the issue was related to limited storage space. Copying the original catalog to a drive with sufficient free space helped resolve the problem.

Could you please try that and let us know how it goes?

Regards,

Srishti

DenisPacAuthor

Known Participant

Hello Srishti,

Indeed, this was the cause of my issue.

I had to delete partially the content of Previews.lrdata folder as it was using a huge space of my drive with about 230GB! I've read that I can delete these previews, so I did.

To avoid such issue, LrC could check the available space before procedding with the upgrade.

Thank you for your help!

Denis

S

Stef M.

Participating Frequently

Bonjour à tous

Suite à la mise à jour vers Lightroom classic 15, à l'ouverture de mon catalogue une fenêtre ouvert demandant de mettre à jour le catalogue. Suite à cette mise à jour du catalogue, rien aucunes photos. Je suis sur Mac Tahoe 26.0.1

S

Stef M.

Participating Frequently

J'ai oublié mon catalogue est sur un disque SSD externe, et je n'ai jamais eu de problème avant la mise à jour.

A

Antoni Serrano

Participant

He instalado la versión 15 y cuando se actualiza el catálogo de la versión 14.5.1 al final aparece el mensaje de la imagen adjunta.
Envío también una captura de pantalla de los archivos que se crean durante el proceso

Srishti Bali

Community Manager

Hi @Antoni Serrano

Sorry to hear about this experience. Thanks for sharing the details and screenshots! It looks like the catalog upgrade process from 14.5.1 to 15 didn’t complete properly. For now, I’d suggest staying on your current version until we can confirm a stable migration path.

Here are a few steps you can try:

First, experiment with a Catalog backup (you’ll need to extract it from its compressed archive before use).
Next, create a new, empty Catalog in the new version, then try Import from Another Catalog using your existing one. This process attempts to upconvert on the fly but may not always succeed.
Alternatively, create a new, empty Catalog in the old version, then Import from Another Catalog to merge your current catalog data. Once that’s done, try upgrading this fresh catalog to the new version.

This approach preserves all key catalog data — edits, collections, virtual copies, and history steps — though some settings like publish services or unused keywords might not carry over.

If you’re syncing to the cloud, keep in mind that sync works with only one catalog at a time, so you may need to re-enable sync for the active one. Refer to this similar post for more details: https://adobe.ly/4nu6O6P;

Regards,

Srishti

K

KenC_18700

Participant

I tried your suggestion. 1. Catalog backup was successful in 14.5.1 2. Updated LrC to V15 3. Opened V15 with a new, empty catalog 4. Import Catalog. IT FAILED. See attached screen shot for error message. 5. Per error message, tried to upgrade the catalog directly. IT FAILED. Please see anothe screen shot.

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