Lightroom 4 crashes on import

[Guest]

Windows 7, Home Edition, version 6.1 service pack 1

Intel 7, with more than 400gb memory available

I've now spent more than 32 hours trying to solve this problem, including two phone calls and three chat sessions with Adobe Help Desk.  The Help desk takes me through the same checklist of "fixes" as the previous calls and inquiries and has resulted only in wasting more hours of my time. 

To date I have tried the following to fix this issue:

- uninstall and reinstall with and without the LR 4.1 update

- create a new administrator account on my machine and run LR off the new account instead

- create a new catalogue for every import (which kind of defeates the purpose of having LR to begin with)

- wipe out my old preferences file and allow LR to create a new one

- completely wipe my hard drive and reinstall EVERYTHING all over again

- rebuild my catalogues from scratch on a new, fresh install of lightroom

- limit my cache size in LR preferences

- limit my backups in LR preferences

- change my 1:1 previews

- attempt to import images from a Nikon 90, D3s and D800 only, each on a fresh LR install (in an effort to see if it was a particular camera model causing the issue)

- attempted to only import directly from another hard drive, rather than an external or internal card reader

Each time I have no more than a day of proper working conditions before the program hangs up and windows pops up a warning that the program has ceased to respond and must close.  Lightroom is rather useless if I can not import images.

I'm out of solutions or fixes, and out of patience now too.  I'd really like to continue using Lightroom products because of how integral it is to my workflow.  At this point I'm ready to switch to a competitor if this issue can not be solved.

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

Oh dear, you have had a time of it!  So sorry to hear that!

One thing you didn't mention - what else is plugged into the computer?  Any phones or tablet pc's nearby?  Networks drives?  Cloud storage?

Is it only at import that it hangs?  Does it hang with the Import dialog open or at what stage?  Is the Import dialog populated with previews?

And it's hanging when you're importing from the hard drive too?

[Guest]

I've tried both with and without my external hard drives connected to the computer. I have no phone, tablets or any other peripheral connected.  It hangs and crashes when I import from internal and external hard drive.  I've tried experimenting with different speed external hard drives to see if reading the drives was the issue.

The same issue happens whether I import from a card or hard drive.

The import dialogue screen opens, but it freezes before the drive(s) or cards are read.  Generally it won't even get to the point of generating previews.

If I wipe out my preferences and completely rebuild the catalogue, I can sometimes get a full day of use out of the program before it hangs again.

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

Call_me_frustrated_kat wrote:

If I wipe out my preferences and completely rebuild the catalogue, I can sometimes get a full day of use out of the program before it hangs again.

Ok, what changes just before it stops working, after it's been working all day?  Or what might you have been doing before it stops working?  If you reboot at that point, does it help?  There has to be something - a conflict with something.  Is it often the same time of day?  Is your computer on a network?  I realise we're clutching at straws here, but it looks like the tech's already ruled out most of the likely issues.

[Guest]

Ok, what changes just before it stops working, after it's been working all day?  Or what might you have been doing before it stops working?  If you reboot at that point, does it help?  There has to be something - a conflict with something.  Is it often the same time of day?  Is your computer on a network?  I realise we're clutching at straws here, but it looks like the tech's already ruled out most of the likely issues.

Nothing changes, unfortuantely.  It's any time of day, with or without externals connected. With or without other progras running. Nothing changes with a reboot.  No other networked device running. 

[wickendenstreet]

I'm a long time mac user. Just installed it on Win7 64 bit. Crashes to the point that nothing else will work on the box. Brand new windows machine, lots of memory. Sad.

[Pete.Green]

Have you tried any of the above suggestions yet wickedenstreet?

[wickendenstreet]

The link above wasn't working. I was able to import, and now it just stops responding to input, not only on Lightroom, but I can't even shut windows down (I can log out is all).

I've got no hubs or anything.

[Guest]

wickendenstreet wrote:

The link above wasn't working. I was able to import, and now it just stops responding to input, not only on Lightroom, but I can't even shut windows down (I can log out is all).

I've got no hubs or anything.

For me it's been six months since this has been an issue and I've tried everything listed here.  The offer to send in the wincrash reports is the last thing I haven't done (seriously, I've lost so much time to this issue that I've even downloaded a competitor's software just to have something that functioned -despite being a huge LR fan and heavy user)

Anyway, here's what I've done that seems to have helped:

- Completely disable and remove extra modules.  I have library, develop and slideshow only.

- DRop the cashe sizes down to 1GB

- import only from desktop, not from external drive, internal card reader or external card reader

- disconnect all external drives, printers and peripherals before beginning import

- start a new catalogue for each session I import (which I hate doing, ruins have the value of LR as a one stop catalogue spot)

-Close everything else, photoshop, web browser  etc

THe biggest issue I'm finding is that just hitting the import button causes a drastic slow down, the memory usage spikes from the usual 72,000 up to double or triple that size... The other day my memory usage jumped from 5% to a whopping 53% just by hitting the import button.

SO, while all of the above isn't a permanent fix, it's allowed me to patch it together enough that it works 75% of the time.

[Pete.Green]

Hi Kat,

Since you're running into this issue with Lightroom crashing on import in Windows,

can you provide me with crash reports to send to the team so we can investigate further the cause of the crashes?

Click this link: http://bit.ly/NgcMBH

This will direct you to a secure page with a direct download link to a zip file.

Download the .zip file and extract it to its own folder.

Follow the directions in the Readme.exe included in the .zip

Email the crash dumps you get to petgreen (at) adobe (dot) com in the bug report.

Let me know what you can do!

Thanks

[Pete.Green]

Kat,

I've sent you an email directly in addition to this response.

We've worked with one user directly -- http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/lightroom_4_crashes_on_importing_files#topic_3...

He uninstalled his USB controllers from device manager in windows 7, as well as uninstalling his USB hubs from device manager.

Rebooted computer, allowed windows to reinstall the drivers, then LR was able to import with success several times, when it wasn't working at all even once.

See if you can try something similar with your setup and let us know how it goes

Thanks!

Pete

[Guest]

can you provide me with crash reports to send to the team so we can investigate further the cause of the crashes?

Click this link: http://bit.ly/NgcMBH

Alright Pete, just tried this four times now. Each time I could easily get LR to cease responding just by clicking on "import".

However, opening the ShowDumps.bat file (to take me to the folder containing the crash dump) reveals an empty folder, no file inside to send to you....

[Pete.Green]

Did you run the EnableCrashDumps.reg first?

[ajgnet]

I am having the same issue with Lightroom 4.1. I tried upgrading to 4.2 RC1, but the error repeats. I have some crash dumps to send, where to I send them to? Would appreciate any help.

[Pete.Green]

Hi Darknesis,

Can you try some of the suggestions above like reinstalling your usb hubs if you have any?

Uninstall them from the device manager, then reboot, then try the import again.

Let us know how that goes.

If you're still crashing after that, you can send the crash dumps to me: Email the crash dumps you get to petgreen (at) adobe (dot) com in the bug report.

[ajgnet]

Peter -- I went through the dumps myself and found the error. My external drive retained some of the file permissions from the previous version of Windows. When Lightroom was importing the images, it encountered a read error because it didn't have adequate permissions to read some of the images.

To resolve this I did:

1. Right-clicked my images folder

2. Security tab

3. Clicked "Advanced"

4. Changed the "owner" to myself

5. Clicked OK and waited for all the ownership permissions to be reset

6. Clicked OK again to exit properties

7. Re-imported the images without error.

Lightroom should probably prompt an error for this instead of crashing

[DornickDesigns]

I'm having the exact same issues with Lightroom!!!!  I'm getting so frustrated!  I'm using a PC with Windows 7 and using Lightroom version 4.2 64-bit.  About 2 months ago, Windows went through a large series of updates and, since then, Lightroom has been "not responding" on imports.  I have uninstalled and reinstalled the program numerous times and it will work flawlessly for a couple of days and then starts acting up again.  I'm really getting tired of it and there doesn't seem to be a solution for it...according to this messsage?!  HELP!

[Pete.Green]

My suggestions above have worked for several people. Have you tried the suggestions in this thread yet?

Try uninstalling your USB hubs from the device manager and reboot so they get reinstalled. See if that helps.

Let us know.

[Dave_Lorde]

I have this LR4 freezing problem. I'm just coming to the last 10 days of the trial period on Windows 8 64bit, and I was seriously considering buying it to complement PS Elements. However, in the last week, it has begun to freeze up for minutes on end when I make some mouse or keyboard input. The whole LR4 application locks solid, I can't minimize it, move it on screen, or close it. If I wait, sometimes up to 10 mins, it usually comes back to life, often only to freeze a short while later (sometimes on next mouse use). If I don't feel like waiting indefinitely, I have to kill it with Taskmaster. The rest of the computer's applications are unaffected, and neither CPU nor memory appears to be under any load (there's 12 GB RAM, so no shortage).

When this problem first started, I uninstalled LR4, cleaned the registry, and rebooted before reinstalling it. I also took ownership of my image folders. The new installation froze as I was selecting folders to import for the first time, unfroze after a couple of minutes, then froze again when I tried to look at the application settings/preferences. I don't feel inclined to risk messing up my USB devices (mouse, keyboard, touch pad, bluetooth, iPod, Android, camera, memory stick, etc.) by uninstalling my USB hubs or drivers. Adobe should be able to write software to handle such things, and multi-threading should allow the main application to run effectively regardless of such external hardware IO access.

There's no point my purchasing this application as it is, although I liked it when it was working. It would be nice to have some indication whether Adobe is working on a fix for this problem, and if so, when it is likely to be available. Otherwise, I'll spend my money elsewhere.

[Pete.Green]

Hi Dave lorde,

Do you get an error dialog for Lightroom crashing?

Also which version of Lightroom are you using? Have you tried with Lightroom 4.4 yet?

You might also try downloading the Lightroom 5 beta that is available now on labs.adobe.com and see how it works on your system there.

As for the current issues, my suggestions are as follows:

0. Make sure you're up to date with LR 4.4 or LR5 beta

1. Take a look through our performance optimization documents for Lightroom and see if any of these suggestions give you something to work with:

Optimize LR performance

http://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/kb/optimize-performance-lightroom.html

Performance Hints

http://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/kb/performance-hints.html

2. Try resetting Lightroom's preferences: http://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/kb/recover-catalog-images-resetting-lightrooms.html#id_90046

3. Try Lightroom in a new administrator user to see if the hangs continue.

Let us know how it goes,

regards,

Pete

[Dave_Lorde]

Hi Pete,

The problem wasn't crashing as such, but hanging unresponsive for arbitrarily long periods. If left long enough, it would recover.

The version was Lightroom 4.4.

I tried all the sensible suggestions on the knowledgebase.

However, the problem now appears to be solved.

It turns out that a rogue Intel Rapid Storage Technology (SATA) service was leaking memory, and was using up to 2GB of working RAM. My Dell PC has 12GB of RAM, so overall RAM levels didn't seem to be a problem. However, since I have replaced this rogue service with an updated version, Lightroom no longer hangs. I don't know why only Lightroom would become so totally unresponsive (I could run Photoshop Elements and other memory-hungry or memory intensive programs normally), but Lightroom does seem to be particularly sensitive to this. Maybe it needs large amounts of contiguous memory, I don't know. It may be a Windows 8 memory management peculiarity.

So my particular Lightroom problem is now resolved, and there is a useful lesson that Lightroom may suffer serious hang problems when other memory hogs are running - even if there is apparently plenty of free memory available.

So thanks for the assistance.

[photogfromseattle]

I don't know if this totally applies to your problem, but I suddenly had problems with importing in Lightroom 4.4.  The program started locking up when I clicked on import, and would crash.

I realized that I had just installed a program called "File Saver", that is used to recover deleted files from memory cards.  I had inadvertently deleted some raw files from a photo shoot today, and needed to recover them.  I installed the program, and immediately had this problem.

I didn't know that the program was causing the problem at first, so I uninstalled LR and reinstalled it, but still had the problem.

As soon as I uninstalled the file saver program, the problem disappeared.  

So, for anyone running into this problem, you may want to uninstall any newly installed programs, especially file recovery software, and that just might be the fix you need.  Good luck.

[jessican23074520]

Hi Pete! 

I just recently updated my Mac OS this afternoon and ever since then I have not been able to import anything into my Lightroom 4.4 without it crashing.  I have tried reinstalling 4.4 and continue to get the issue.  Sometimes I can edit existing photos in there but if I sync my phone or my SD card it crashes immediately.  Any thoughts?!

[FuzzyTheDuck]

I had a similar problem and found a solution. Lightroom 4.4 on Windows 7 would crash after I hit "Import" before reaching the import window. I had my smart phone (Samsung Galaxy S3) plugged in to my computer and by unplugging it I stopped getting the error. Everything went fine after that, including importing from CF card and simultaneously backing up to an external hard drive.

[rayates55]

I have the same problem. Clicking on Import resulted in an immediate 'Lightroom Not Responding' message. The problem appears ONLY if my smart phone or my camera is plugged in to USB ports. To import I must first copy files from the camera or the phone to the hard drive, unplug them, and only then open Lightroom and import the files from the hard drive.

(Lightroom 5.3 64 bit, Windows 7 Home)