Participant

Answered

Problem reinstalling Lightroom

Forum|Forum|3 months ago
January 24, 2026
2 replies
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I had a repair on my desktop and have not been able to successfully install Lightroom Classic with my most recent Catalogue. I've uninstalled and reinstalled without success. I have a catalogue that was saved on 12/30/2025, but can't get Lightroom to import it. This is the message I get:

Lightroom cannot create a catalog named "Lightroom Catalog-v13-13" on volume "This PC" because Lightroom cannot save changes to this location.
Lightroom Catalogs can not be opened in network volumes, removable storage or read only volumes.

The catalogue is on my C drive, which is not any of those things.

Thanks for any guidance.

Bill Black

How to

Correct answer Guynoir53

Write permission is not the read-only checkbox. You have to right click on the folder, then select Properties, then go into the security tab and make sure that Write permission is selected.

SUCCESS!! i made the changes you recommended and still got the error message. But I neglected to mention that the files in the backup folder were in a zip file. D'uh! I extracted the files, clicked on the lrcat file and "Bam" everything came back! Thank you again for holding my hand through this. What a relief!!!

Bill Black

dj_paige

Legend

In Windows Explorer, make sure the folder that contains your catalog has write permission. Make sure the catalog file itself is not makred as "read-only"

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Guynoir53Author

Participant

You got my hopes up. The folder did have the "Read only" box checked. I unchecked it and clicked on it. Got the same message. Then I rebooted my computer. Same message. Did the same with other, earlier, lrcat files. Same message.

Strangely, when I try to "Change catalogue" file from within Lightroom, it doesn't see any of the lrcat files.

Any other ideas? Thanks again.

Bill Black

dj_paige

Legend

Write permission is not the read-only checkbox. You have to right click on the folder, then select Properties, then go into the security tab and make sure that Write permission is selected.

KR Seals

Community Expert

What was the nature of the "repair"?

Do you still have the folder with the catalog file (.lrcat) and previews? If so, copy that folder to the root of the C: drive. Then, open that folder in Windows Explorer and double click on the latest version of the .lrcat file. That will cause Lightroom Classic to open with that catalog file if Lightroom Classic has been properly installed.

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.

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Guynoir53Author

Participant

Ken,

Thank you for the help. The repair that was done was to install a new hard drive, but the technician said that some of my program files were corrupted on my C drive. He gave me a new C drive, reinstalled Windows and moved all the files to the newly installed E drive. I took your advice and uninstalled and reinstalled Lightroom Classic. I had backup lrcat files on my D drive, which was untouched by the techician. I copied some to the C drive and clicked on them as you suggested. I got the error message below for all of them. I then copied a lightroom backup folder from an external SSD drive to the C drive. Presumably, unaffected by corrupted files on the old C drive. I got the same error message. Am I screwed? I have all my photos (10s of thousands) on my D drive and they seem OK. Do I need to import them all back into Lightroom again? Can I do that? I know I'll lose edits, collections and categories.

Here's the error message:

"Lightroom cannot use the catalogue named "Lightroom Catalogue-v13-3" because it is not writable and cannot be opened.
"This could be caused by incorrect permissions or because another Lightroom application is using the catalogue. You may try to correct the problem or you may select a different catalogue."

Thanks again for the help.

Bill Black

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