Catalogs not Loading

[shulkakm17]

My computer recently had one too many improper shut downs. For whatever reason would not let me keep using the version of lightroom I was using. I needed to update anyway to the newest version to I installed the newest version and tried to load my catalog to that to keep working on my projects. Lightroom keeps telling me that it can't open that catalog because it's open in another lightroom. So I un installed all other versions of LR and restarted the computer and still cant get the catalog to open. What can I try next? I would hate to start over.

[AxelMatt · Accepted solution]

Check if there is a .lock in the same folder as your catalog. If yes delete this .lock file.

Take a look here: Lightroom catalog cannot be opened

Axel

[shulkakm17]

Unfortunately it's not that simple. It just says that I can't load the catalog because it is open in  another copy of LR. But nothing else is open. I have tried everything that I can think of. Deleting all other lightrooms, restarting the computer so nothing else could possibly be running.

[Hal P Anderson]

It is that simple. With LR closed look in the same folder with your Lightroom catalogue and find the file that ends in a '.lock' extension. Delete that file. Then open Lightroom.

The .lock file is created when LR opens, and it's deleted when LR closes normally. Lightroom uses the file's existence to know if LR is already running against that catalogue. When your system crashed, the file wasn't deleted properly, so LR figures the catalogue is in use.