How to log what leads up to Lightroom Freezing?

[edrob]

The question I hope to have answered is how I can log events leading up to LR freezing. With the freeze I am not presented a crash report option and I'm sure I'll need the log before I turn to Adobe. Adobe has addressed this but I don't think it applies to Windows 11. I could not find any of the utility programs the article mentioned.

My problem is Lightroom seems to load ok but within less than a minute will freeze. It does not matter what I have done before the freeze. IE. select an image, switch to develop mode, go into preferences, scroll the folder list, etc. Whatever I do the program will freeze. When I click anywhere again the LR window goes transparent white. When I click to close LR the Windows "Program is not responding" dialogue comes up. Fortunately LR will close promptly and Windows OS does not seem to be affected.

I've spent the last four days scouring Adobe forums, Adobe help pages and the Internet looking for solutions and I've tried probably a dozen. Changing catalogues, create a new catalogue, delete preferences, delete and add registry entries, uninstall & install older and current versions, Graphics driver update, turn off graphics card, computer diagnostics, etc. About the only thing I haven't done is reinstall Windows.

I'm currently on LR 12.4 (but the earlier version would freeze too,) Windows 11 (10.0.22621)

[johnrellis]

There is no documented unified logging facility in LR, unfortunately. You can enable the -tracebacks option, which sometimes gives clues as to what might be going wrong.  It's easy to do on Mac without any additional utilities, but on Windows, you've got to use the DebugView utility from Microsoft:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-bugs/p-sdk-waitforrender-returnes-error-in-quot-pub...

Post the captured log here, and I might be able to make some sense of it.

[edrob]

Thank you johnrellis for the information and link to DebugView. I recall seeing it listed in an article from Adobe but it was not clear where to find it. I have run DebugView and the Log file is included. A see a lot of "file not found"?

Thank you for your help.

[johnrellis]

Hmm, that log isn't showing any output from LR.  It's been a couple years since I last used -tracebacks on Windows. I tried it just now, and it appears to be broken (it still works on Mac).  Oh well, one less useful tool available to mere mortals for diagnosing LR issues...

[johnrellis]

I wrote, "It's been a couple years since I last used -tracebacks on Windows. I tried it just now, and it appears to be broken (it still works on Mac)."

This is wrong. I forgot you had to use the WinDbg or DebugView utilities from Microsoft to see the console output on Windows. See the section "Debugging your plugin" in the Lightroom Classic SDK Programmers Guide.

[Keith Reeder]

Firstly - thanks for your "due diligence" in trying to find an answer on here before posting.

Secondly - because of the lack of any such tool, it might be easier to come at this from a different angle: there's a fair chance that your problem is hardware related in some way - especially as it has been present across Lr versions - so could you post your system details, please?

Post the output of "Help > System Info...". 

[edrob]

Thank you for your interest in helping, Keith. I have included the computer System Information file. Lightroom appears to be the only program with this problem, Photoshop seems to operate normally. Thanks to your (forum) colleague, Johnrellis, I've also been able to supply a log file that may help as well. (well, it didn't 😞 )

Note: The forum file attachment does not allow me to attach the System Info file so I am including a DropBox link:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/doxrkypb3yj6v34wdddd3/h?rlkey=7yeghari96g1ljqbm0f790pm0&dl=0

Again, thanks.

[edrob]

Update - After I sent the last reply I realized you ask for system information generated from Lightroom. After numerous unsuccessful tries to beat the freeze clock I did something different, I started Lightroom and left it alone for about ten minutes. Wow, I was able to get into Lightroom (so I'm attaching the system info file you ask for) and LR, so far, is working. I'm not happy about needing to wait 5, 10? minutes but it's a clue.

[GoldingD]

So, your catalog is in DropBox?

[Rob_Cullen]

"So, your catalog is in DropBox?"  I also ask!

Get it OUT of a Dropbox folder! Onto a 'local' drive.

[edrob]

Rob & GoldingD, thanks for the thoughts about DropBox. One of my first actions was to move the catalogue out of DropBox, but LR would still freeze. The new catalogue I created was located out of DB as well, but LR would still freeze. So DrobBox isn't the problem.