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Question

Lightroom Classic will not launch but "hangs." on macOS BigSur

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
January 31, 2021
4 replies
1401 views

Downloaded Photography Plan to new iMac with Big Sur OS after transferring data from old Mac with El Capitan OS. LR Classic will not open but "hangs" per report that issues. Tried uninstall and reinstall and reboots. Last program was LR 6.14 which was copied to new Mac but not usable on 64-bit OS. New PS and LR programs open with no problem.

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DdeGannes

Community Expert

One critical issue is do you have a copy of your latest Catalog File, that file will contain all the info about all the work you have done in Lightroom? It will have an extension .lrcat (LRCAT). It's the only place the info about your collections is stored. By default that file is located in your user folder structure in your OS in Picturers > Lightroom/ , with several other files.

Regards, Denis: iMac 27” mid-2015, macOS 11.7.10 Big Sur; 2TB SSD, 24 GB Ram, GPU 2 GB; LrC 12.5,; Lr 6.5, PS 24.7,; ACR 15.5,; (also Laptop Win 11, ver 24H2, LrC 15.0.1, PS 27.0; ) Camera Oly OM-D E-M1.

J

Jao vdL

Community Expert

Try starting Classic while holding the option key. You should get a dialog where you can select which catalog file to open. You can also attempt to repair a catalog file there by checking "test integrity of this catalog". Do this for your main catalog. If it still hangs, try the same thing and create a new catalog. Check if Classic will start with such a new empty catalog.

Any antivirus or "cleanup" utilities installed? Be very wary of those. They usually do more harm than good.

DdeGannes

Community Expert

I think it may be helpful to obtain the free book by the Lightroom Queen on moving Lightroom to a new computer. There are very detailed descriptions there of this complex operation.

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/moving-lightroom-free-ebook/

Regards, Denis: iMac 27” mid-2015, macOS 11.7.10 Big Sur; 2TB SSD, 24 GB Ram, GPU 2 GB; LrC 12.5,; Lr 6.5, PS 24.7,; ACR 15.5,; (also Laptop Win 11, ver 24H2, LrC 15.0.1, PS 27.0; ) Camera Oly OM-D E-M1.

Akash Sharma

Legend

Hi there,

Sorry that Lightroom Classic on your Mac running the macOS BigSur does not open and freezes.

Would you mind sharing the exact version of the Lightroom Classic app you're using? Also, as you've mentioned that their were older Lightroom apps installed, I would recommend that you reinstall Lightroom Classic on your computer.

If that does not help, would you mind restoring Lightroom Classic app preferences to default and let us know if the issue still persists? Please refer this article for step by step instructions:
https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/help/setting-preferences-lightroom.html#restore_preferences_to_default_settings

Thanks,

Akash

karenl2127Author

Known Participant

Thank you for responding. I was losing hope of hearing from Adobe.

I have installed, rebooted, uninstalled, rebooted many times with no change. I removed the preferences per your link below and it still will not launch.

FYI I have sent Adobe numerous reports created after force quits.

OS is Big Sur 11.2. Would it help if I downgraded to Catalina?

LRC app is 10.1.1 [202101041610-8c69aa4e]

I also have older versions of LR which I Migrated to the new computer from external hard drive so as not to loose LR edits to my photos. Those versions are:
LR6.14 [1149743] installed 2019
LR6 [1014445] installed 2015
LR 5.7.1 994254]
LR 4.4 [891433]

I still have my external hard drive that I used on my old computer that is unchanged/not updated with new OS.

On my old computer (OS El Capitan) LR 6.14 would require several launch attempts before opening. Since Apple no longer supported the OS and Adobe no longer supported that version LR I lived with it. So there could be a problem embedded in an older LR version but I am concerned about making changes to those programs b/c I don’t want to lose my LR edits and collections (88K images.)

What would be the effect of removing the preferences file from the LR 6.14 version?

What do you recommend?

Thanks, Karen

Akash Sharma

Legend

Hi Karen,

Thanks for your descriptive response.

Lightroom Classic imports all the preferences from Lightroom 6.14 upon installation.

Restoring the app preferences for both Lightroom Classic 10.1.1 and Lightroom 6.14 would help us move into right the direction of troubleshooting.

Let us know how it goes.

Thanks,

Akash

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