Lightroom 3 freezing when using import

[Richard4911]

Whhen attempting to import images from an external USB hard drive Lightroom 3 freezes.

The import bar goes across and Lightroom import about 3 images before freezing.

If I close Lightroom and re-start the import it'll import a few more images and freeze again.

Any ideas?

[Guest]

Well, several weeks later and still no response from Adobe.  Without feedback from Adobe that they still need the user community to submit data on the problem, I am not willing to do so.  Nor am I willing to spend many hours debugging the issue, re-installing software (including operating systems), reformattting drives and disabling other fetaures and software that I regularly use and rely on (anti-virus etc) - all of which have been recommended here at some point as possible solutions.

Without feedback from Adobe, I have given up on LR3 and have gone back to Lightroom 2.6 - which is becoming painfully slow with 100000+ images but otherwise works quite well, thank you, and was properly debugged before its release.  I just can't afford to wait any longer dealing with this Import frustration.

regards,

rob

[Michael_Tapes]

Hi all,

Try reinstalling the program and that may help you as well.

I did an uninstall, then a re-boot, then a re-install, and I have now

gone about 5 hours without an Import Problem. Still too early to blow the trumpets, but it is a good sign.

Windows XP SP3

I will give a status report later tomorrow.

UPDATE:

Freeze has returned. So the re-install did NOT help at all. Back to the drawing board.

Michael

[Tetralogy]

It sure seems to me that Adobe has screwed up

big time. I was using LR 3 beta without a problem importing my images from a portable harddirve

. I just loaded up LR 3 and I have had the same horror story as in this thread. Can't Adobe

re-establish their beta version and provide it to all of us fools who spent their dime to

buy the new and improved LR 3?? I like others would like to be able to process my images, particlularly those previously uploaded via LR!!

Come on Adobe....you have a loyal (??) following waiting for a solution!!

ERR

[TommyOBrien]

I had this same problem as have a lot of other folks on a camera forum that I use.  I resolved the problem three times on my Win XP SP2 setup.  I use an internal multi-card reader connected to a USB2.0 root hub.   I never had any issues with LR2.x.  I went through and disabled all the USB devices in hardware manager and then re-enabled the one to which the card reader was attached.  I could then import photo's just fine, but still a little slower than previously (15 minutes for 4GB CF card as opoposed to 10 minutes).  After rebooting ... problem returns since windows tries to re-enable the USB hubs.  Problem manifests as very painfully slow rendering of previews, and then seemingly hung on import process .. perhaps one or two images load in a 60 minute run.  I have tried tethering the camera to the PC via a separate USB port (USB 3, USB 2, and USB 1 were tried) and it makes no difference.  Copying files directly works fine - so long as I have not tried to use LR3 to read the cards on import.  After trying to use import the card reader is stuck in snail mode, even for Windows usage.

[Guest]

Does anyone have a clue to what Adobe support is doing? Are they on Summer break?

The loyal followers of their products have been shat on and they don't know what to expect......just damn.

[TheDigitalDog]

Charbinjr wrote:

Does anyone have a clue to what Adobe support is doing? Are they on Summer break?

The loyal followers of their products have been shat on and they don't know what to expect......just damn.

The team may have taken a few days or so to decompress after the release but I can assure you they are working their little tails off as usual. And the bit about being shat on is not at all fair. While some are having issues, the vast majority of us are importing with no such issues. Gathering as much information about your system, files, procedures that produce the issue will go farther in getting this resolved than being insulting.

[Chris Crumley]

Andrew, I'm in an objective mode because the Import failure for me is in the Preview Rendering part of LR3 Import. The files themselves actually get imported and .xmp files made. The Rendering phase of the Import causes an App Freeze, but a force start and App restart puts me back in business.

But I feel the pain of those who can't import at all. This problem has been reported/described for weeks with no feedback from Adobe (that I've seen). If you are having a significant failure in the most/one of the most critical pieces of software in the workflow and weeks go by without some acknowledgement from the development team, messages are going to start getting tainted with frustration.

These are basic human reactions that the Adobe team needs to be sensitive to and do something about them. In a word: Communicate.

"We understand the problem and are working on it" will go a long way.

[Michael_Tapes]

Also, this thread contains several different problems associated with Import. My specific problem which I moved to this thread, is specific to the Import screen not being drawn when entering import making the system look like it frozen. Many of the other issues detailed in this thread have nothing to do with "my" problem and are specific instances where Import UI is working fine but the actual Import fails. I, for example have never had the Import process fail, on those occasions where the UI functions properly.

The point is that this thread has become a catch all for many Import issues, which might make it hard for the engineers to make sense of it.

Just a thought.

Michael Tapes

Update July 17:

My problem has been solved. It was the /3GB switch. Link.

[TommyOBrien]

I have connected my camera directly to the PC using the USB cable and a free port on the back of the PC.  It works just fine.  My issue seems to be with the attached USB deices; built-in ports work fine.

[Guest]

In Post 59, Tommy made an obvious suggestion of something to try that worked for him which I hadn't thought of. After reading posts for months and hoping to see an upgrade/patch from Adobe, his suggestion worked! Plug your camera in directly via usb to a computer usb port - no hub or other devices to pass through.

This is NOT an acceptable permanent solution, but at least I can now import 200 raw files without restarting anything or disabling McAfee. Thanks a lot Tommy!!!! Way to go.

Shame on Adobe for continuing to not acknowledge the glitch. I do NOT want to plug my 5300$ camera in and use it as a flipping card reader. This is BS.

Hope this helps the beleaguered masses who are still hanging there in hopes of a solution.

[Photosteve729]

On July 5, I reported my attempt to solve my import issue on my xp desktop. I reinstalled LIghtroom 3. I did not uninstall Lightroom first, disconnect my USB card reader, disable antivirus software or anything else other than restart my computer post-installation. Since then, import has worked fine for me.

[not2ez4u]

TommyObrien you are a hero.  In your post you stated, "I went through and disabled all the USB devices in hardware manager and then re-enabled the one to which the card reader was attached."

I have been having problems in importing jpgs and raw files from a catalog on my C: drive I've used in the past without any probelms.  But recently LR3 kept freezing up.  No matter what button I selected in the menu options I would get an hour glass that persisted for many minutes.   Then I would get the "Lightroom 3 (not responding)" at the top of the window.  I'd close the app just to restart it and experience the same thing.  I even uninstalled LR3.3 and reinstalled LR3.0.  No change.  But what you said made me think that maybe the MicroSD card inserted in the card slot, and which showed in My Computer as being recognized by the driver, was interfering with LR3.  I thought that maybe LR3 was trying to map to a device it can't read.  So, I removed the MicroSD Card adapter and that solved the problem.  LR3 works as it did when I first installed it, and at which time I DID NOT have a SD card inserted.  Thanks for cueing up this thought.  So for all others out there who are having LR3 freeze up or cannot inport files from catalogs . . . . .

                    MAKE SURE YOU REMOVE ANY SD/MicroSD CARDS FROM YOUR PC.  THEY MAY BE THE CAUSE OF LR3 FREEZES.

[Guest]

SOLVED ! (at least for me...)

Rule of life: Some of the easiest solutions are often the harder to find.

Here how I did to correctly import all my photos in one shot:

1- Disconnect from internet

2- Shut Down Anti-virus and Firewall

3- Import.

4- Restart Anti-virus and Firewall.

I'm using BitDefender2010.

[dave_simpson]

i've the same import problem as others - you can watch the program labouring flicking through folders and drawing the import grid.  i just tried the disabling firewall and antivirus and didn't help me (although i'd already put my photo folders in the 'miss list').  Perhaps this is just adobe's way of telling us all to slow down. ho hum.

[80series]

I have no issues with 2.7 and thought it was a great product. Import works fine. I purchased 3 and now, Import freezes regularly and Lightroom crashes with an unexpected application error. I'm running XP SP3. I have norton [I notice people suggest in may be a firewall issue] - I am going to revert to 2.7 and seek a refund on the upgarde to 3.0.

[Richard4911]

And still no official response from Adobe.

If Adobe cared for their customers they would at least say something.

They've got our money and that's all they care about.

[Ian Lyons]

Richard4911 wrote:

And still no official response from Adobe.

If Adobe cared for their customers they would at least say something.

They've got our money and that's all they care about.

Post 54 of this thread has a link to another related thread. The OP for that thread resolved the problem and was contacted directly by Adobe.

http://forums.adobe.com/message/2981433#2981433

[D3S_user]

Thanks for pasting in the links. Not unlike CNX2.2.4, the Adobe LR3 was not ready for prime time it would seem.

Knowing which and what OS and such is fine for sleuthing in code-land but running  i7, NVIDIA,  8mb Ram, external eSATA @ 7,200 RPM's and internal SATA, there is not much else to say other than both of these companies are costing end users and professionals time and money, so welcome to the digital age.

Marketing is important but all y'all should have not rushed this out just because the business has been soft.

Your Adobe program simply crashes on importing, or if I'm lucky, it waits until I try to set the check boxes and move it to the editing platform.

Very dissapointing indeed to toss $300, as I've been able to do editing twice in time to transfer the TIF back to CNX before LR3 dies, out of a few dozen trys.

[Samoreen]

Hi,

My two cents...

[Using XP SP3 - 3GB - plenty of disk space]

I didn't have this problem when importing RAW files until I scanned some old films and decided to import a batch of TIF files. Then the "freezing when importing" problem immediately appeared. LR3 freezed after some disk activity as soon as I clicked on the Synchronize button in the Synchronize Folder dialog. No way to recover beside killing the process. Note that when this happens, you may not be able to access other applications until you minimize the LR3 main window (strangely enough the Minimize button remains active). For example, when hitting Control+Shift+Esc, the Windows task manager should appear and stay in the foreground. If you do that once LR3 has frozen, the Task Manager window remains in the background until you minimize the LR window (which is the only way to refresh the display in that case). In order to be able to click the Minimize button, you may have to hit the Escape key. This makes the LR main window caption bar active.

I could also observe the following:

1. The problem doesn't occur (never) if I uncheck the "Show import dialog before importing" option.
2. The problem does occur when right-clicking a folder in the left pane and chosing "Import into this folder".
3. The problem does occur when you drag and drop an image file from Windows Explorer to the current folder which should trigger the display of the Import dialog.
4. The problem does occur when clicking on the Import button (bottom left in the Library module).
5. Now the problem also occurs when importing RAW files. Bad move...

So (at least for me) the problem is clearly related to the Import dialog which is never displayed when the bug appears. I have the feeling that there's a problem during the import dialog creation process which happens before the window is made visible (this could explain the strange things reported above).

Pretty buggy anyway. Waiting for the next version...

[Samoreen]

Samoreen wrote:

So (at least for me) the problem is clearly related to the Import dialog which is never displayed when the bug appears.

Relying on my experience as a (retired) Windows developer, I also have the feeling that the Import dialog window is created but "out of sight". Using Spy++ I can see some Lightroom related windows that have strange coordinates and client rectangle dimensions. If someone at Adobe could tell me the name of the window class used by the Import dialog, I could investigate further...

Everything is happening as if the import dialog was there, waiting for user input, but not visible. Which could explain that LR appears to be frozen while the Import dialog is just waiting. Just a feeling though...

[Michael_Tapes]

Samoreen,

I agree with all of the behavior that you have described in terms of LR thinking that the Import dialog is drawn, but we cannot see it. As I have discussed previously, in my system, all issues disappeared when I removed the /3GB switch.

Michael Tapes

[Samoreen]

Michael Tapes wrote:

I agree with all of the behavior that you have described in terms of LR thinking that the Import dialog is drawn, but we cannot see it. As I have discussed previously, in my system, all issues disappeared when I removed the /3GB switch.

Hi Michael,

I'm not using the /3GB switch. The problem sometimes disappears after a reboot but re-appears after using LR for a while. No idea why.

Thanks.

[m_a_d_r_a]

same problem here:

import works some times, but most of the time seems to hang after importing a couple of images.

one aspect particular to my circumstances which may or may not have a bearing on the problem; my photo library is not on the same computer on which i am running LR3.  it is on a networked server.  this *may* add some more credence to the theories that LR3 import is likely to fail if there is not a 'direct' path from camera–through LR3–to library.   ie. in my case the connection between LR3 and my library is over my intranet. in other reported cases the connection between camera and LR3 is via a hub or other device.

just a thought!

[Tetralogy]

I had the same problem when trying to use LR3 on my networked computer. I had several conversations with the tech staff at Adobe and they told me that LR3 is not designed to work on a networked computer (even though previous versions did as did the beta version of LR3). It works fine on my non-networked laptop.

Eliot

[Samoreen]

Hi,

I don't think that the two problems related to Import that we are discussing here (freezing during Import and Import window being hidden) are caused by the fact that the computer is networked or that the catalog is on a server. Many of us have these problems and are using a stand-alone computer. Adobe must stay focused on the Import problem itself.

It's surprising that LR doesn't support a networked catalog (Bibble 5 does) but it's the way it works. So if you need to store your images and your catalog on a remote computer, I suggest that you keep a copy of these images on the local computer, use these images to work in LR and synchronize regularly with the remote folder. You have multiple ways to automatize the folder synchronization. I'm using Microsoft SyncToy. It's free. It has command line switches, so that you can schedule a task on one of the computers in order to trigger the synchronization automatically (this is done every other hour on my network).

Anyway, this should be discussed in another thread, I think.