Lightroom catalog corrupted and now LR won't open

Report · Mar 22, 2024

My Lightroom program has a big problem. I'm running up to date CC on Windows 10. It started by LR crashing when I was exporting images. Then it would not open at all. I imported a catalog backup and it too became corrupted. This has actually happened to me before, a couple of years ago. So I tried what worked then. I parked a fresh catalog backup alongside the folder with the corupted catalogs and the image files. It opened normally and from what I can see is fully functional. This was my experience two years ago as well. But in this case something in the original folder is corrupting any new catalogs and is keeping Windows from copying it. I cannot make fresh backups. I also cannot open Lightroom on this computer now with any of my catalogs.

My conclusion was that the problem is upstream of the catalogs. If I was on my own I would delete and reinstall Lightroom. But I thought I should put the problem before the forum before I do too much & can't remember what I did. Besides, the problem does seem to be inside that one catalog folder. There have been other problems with this installation. I have both Photoshop CC and Beta on this computer and they don't get along that well with LR. But that is an old problem. If I do reinstall Lightroom I will reinstall Photoshop as well, without Beta. I hope I have made this clear.

Thanks in advance to all.

Report · Mar 22, 2024

The conclusion I come to is that your hard disk is malfunctioning. Probably you will need to replace it. Reinstalling the software will not help.

Temporary workround: Unzip a recent backup, place it somewhere on a different disk than the corrupted catalog, in a new empty folder, and open it from there.

Report · Mar 22, 2024

Yes that works. I also can put the good backup catalog on the same drive as long as it is not inside the corrupted folder. Your suugestion about this problem originating in the drive itself is very possible. This is a portable SSD type drive and I've wondered if a drive malfunction could have caused this. But usually Windows catched drive problms.

Since I posted I've brought in a couple of other independant catalogs and they are opening normally now. What ever was preventing LR ftom opening yesterday has gone away. All of the trouble seems to be in the folder with the corrupt catalog.