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J
Judge62
Known Participant
April 14, 2018
Question

Cannot unzip or open Lightroom Catalogs

  • April 14, 2018
  • 1 reply
  • 1742 views

This morning, in order to make more space on my hard drive, I erased a number of older LR backups (standlone, desktop version).  After I did that, when I launched LR, it would not load....said something about catalog (.lrcat file) could not be found.

Fortunately, I had a backup of those catalogs I had erased on another drive, so I copied them onto my main drive.

I still received that message that the catalog could not be found.

I tried to open a new catalog from a catalog I had just made last night.  I started launching that catalog; however, after maybe 30 seconds, it stopped and said something about being unable to extract the .lrcat  file.  I tried to extract it in windows, but I received a message saying "Windows will not extract Zip file error code 0X80004005 Unspecified Error."

Another thing is that when I was trying to find the .lrcat files through LR, I did not see them (I tried multiple older backups).  This was with the option of showing "All Supported Files" as well as the option of showing ".lrcat" files.  When I choose the option to show "All Files," the .lrcat files do show, but that's when I get that error code mentioned above when I try to open them.

I tried this for numerous older catalogs going back to early this year.  I received the same error messages.

When I tried to unzip an .lrcat file from late December, 2017, that worked.  Unfortunately, it does not have the picture files and edits for the pictures I put into Lightroom in 2018.

I have found some links about that error code, some of which give different ways to fix it.  It's interesting that while I see a link from Microsoft on this error code, clicking on that link does not work.

Anyway, does anyone have any ideas what might be going on and how to fix it?  I'd sure like to relaunch the catalog I created last night....it sounds as if for some reason, the catalogs I backed up in 2018 might be corrupted in some way, although, given some of the solutions proposed on other links, there might be hope to recover those...just don't know which solution to use, however.

Thanks

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    1 reply

    JP Hess
    JP Hess
    Inspiring
    April 14, 2018

    Do you have any of the files that you deleted remaining in the recycle bin?

    J
    Judge62Author
    Known Participant
    April 14, 2018

    Unfortunately, none of the files I deleted remain in the recycle bin.  As a matter of fact, I deleted a number of older catalogs, and the total size was so large that these files could not be sent to the recycle bin.

    I am almost 100% positive that I did not delete anything other than these older catalogs, and I did copy them from a backup of those files from another hard drive.

    JohanElzenga
    Community Expert
    JohanElzengaCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    April 14, 2018

    I guess that's one thing I'm confused on.  I thought that when you exit LR and check the box to backup a catalog, that's what is saved and backed up....the actual catalog.

    That backup of the catalog is in the same folder that I put all of my backups in:

    C:.....This PC\Pictures\Lightroom 6 Backups\Backups

    Whenever I make a backup, I always copy it to another internal drive, my E:\ drive in a similarly named folder.  I also make a 2nd backup to my external RAID drives, R:\.

    This morning, I erased the older backups I still had through October, 2017 on both the C:\ drive as well as on the R:\ drive, but I kept whatever I had on the E:\ drive.  I copied the ones I erased on the C:\ drive from the E:\ drive, and I have the problems I've listed.

    I know in the past, I have had to go back to an older backup, and I've had no problems (and, as mentioned, I still do not have problems with backups I made last December (and probably November).

    What I'm concerned with is that if I have to import all of the pictures I have taken in 2018, a backup with those new pictures will not be able to be loaded in the future if I need to use it.

    Thanks for looking into this...if you think of anything else, please let me know.  I might go ahead and try one of those fixes I see on various websites for that particular error...I just want to make sure that those fixes are from reputable sources.


    I'm afraid there seems to be a bug in the Lightroom Classic 7.3 catalog backup routines (only the Windows version). Adobe knows this and is working on a fix. That means you either have to find a backup that was created before you updated (so a backup made my Lr 7.2) or a backup made by a general backup utility (hopefully you make regular backups of your entire hard drive).

    -- Johan W. Elzenga
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