Can not open lightroom, when catalog is on an external drive

[kenwood333]

Using the most up to date version of lightroom, I have been having touble opening a catalog on an external drive for some time.  I have tried many things, including buying a new external drive, swiching between windows and mac os etc.. normally the catalog would open after 1-2 tries, but now it wont open after more than 3 attempts.  Lightroom keeps loading, appear stuck on something and evetually crash.  The problem got worse after the most recent update that upgarding the catalog.  I am fairly sure it was due to the catalog but how to trouble shoot furhter?

[Moved from ‘Bugs’ to ‘Discussions’ by moderator, according to forum rules. A ‘bug’ is not just another word for any problem with software!]

[JohanElzenga]

Try creating a new catalog on the external drive and see if Lightroom can open that. If it can, then it's probably your existing catalog. If it crashes as well, then there might be a hardware issue.

[kenwood333]

No issues with new catalog, but then my old catalog was forced to upgrade after a recent LR upgrade, which is why I m suspecting the update was the root of the problem.

[JohanElzenga]

That means you catalog is corrupted. The upgrade created an upgraded copy, so you should still have the old copy. Try upgrading that old copy again (use 'File - Open catalog' and simply open the old catalog). As you say you already had a problem with the old copy too, this may not be enough (why didn't you ask for help earlier?). You could then try this: create an entirely new catalog and then use 'File - Import from Another Catalog'. Import your existing catalog. Do not move images. This will create an exact copy of your existing catalog, and often corruption will be gone.