Corrupt catalogue

[JDP24]

Hi,

I am using Lightroom Classic on with Windows 11 Home. A recent windows update caused lightroom to reinstall, once complete I then had an error saying my catalogue was corrupt and needed repairing. The repair was done, however many of my images that I had edited are present but in their orginal Raw state (no edit) and there are 1000's of images missing. The folders are present in the catalogue tree on the left but are all empty and greyed out. The files are all there on the hard drives in the windows file explorer. I have tried syncing the folder and updating the folder location which has not worked. I have also tried to reimport the images but I get a message to say the photos are already in the catalogue. I loathed to delete the folders and reimport as I have spent many years editing these photos. 

Any suggestion so I can save my work would be appreciated. 

Thanks

Josh

[JDP24]

Oh and incase this is relevant, since the windows update Lightroom has been painfully slow, with images not loading in the grid view until you click on them. 

[GoldingD]

A recent windows update 

What was that update? Perhaps look at your Windows Updates (history) to show that.

[Justin Hoch]

Oh, I'm sorry to that. I hate that feeling.

First thing is to make a copy of your catalog file in Windows Explorer, not in Lightroom. Keep the original file in a safe place and only work from copies. Then open the copy and work on repairs there.

When you say they are in their Raw state, are you looking in the History panel in the Develop module? Is there any history present on these files?

Do you have a backup of your catalog from before the update you can load? If you do, make a copy of that and try loading the copy of the backup.

Always keep an original before proceeding to repair or open a copy in case it causes further issues. Hopefully you have backups and can move forward from there, limiting how much work you might have lost.