Lightroom Classic will not open after turning on OneDrive

[winstond49232361]

Last week I turned on MicroSoft OneDrive on my Windows 11 Desktop.

A few days ago I saw an update popping up when I tried to turn on Lightroom Classic. 

Now Lightroom Classic will not open AND my entire Catalogue and Previews directory in C:\Pictures has disappeared.

Does anyone have a solution for this please?

I backed up my Lightroom Catalogue 4 weeks ago to an external hard disk but have done quite a number of updates recently and I dread to think of redoing them.

Any help will be much appreciated.

[johnrellis]

As a first troubleshooting step, please do the LR menu command Help > System Info and copy/paste the entire contents here so we can see exactly which versions of hardware and software LR thinks you're running and important LR options that are set.

[winstond49232361]

I cannot open Lightroom. The hourglass comes on momentarily and then, nothing happens.

I tried the Shift+Alt step and clicked to clear preferences and tried again. 

Still same situation.

[johnrellis]

"I cannot open Lightroom."

Oh, right, of course, sorry.

Did you turn off Onedrive as dj_paige suggested?  It's been reported as causing many problems for LR users.

[winstond49232361]

Yes, I have trned off One Drive. 

Will Lightroom open if I have NOT copied the Catalogue and Preview from the backup to its original position, please?

Thank you for your generous advice.

[johnrellis]

"Will Lightroom open if I have NOT copied the Catalogue and Preview from the backup to its original position, please?"

LR will start. But if it doesn't find the last opened catalog at its original position, it will ask you to navigate to another catalog or create a new one.  Do not try to open a backup catalog without first copying it -- open the copy.

[winstond49232361]

I uninstalled and reinstalled but same situation and Lightroom will not open. The Task Manager shows the above with a red highlight for Lightroom Classic

[johnrellis · Accepted solution]

"I uninstalled and reinstalled but same situation and Lightroom will not open."

Use the Creative Cloud Cleaner tool to completely uninstall all traces of all Creative Cloud apps. Then reinstall just LR:

https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/kb/cc-cleaner-tool-installation-problems.html

[winstond49232361]

Thank you. Will try that tomorrow. 

[winstond49232361]

I selected "Lightroom" for the cleanup after it completed, I tried  to reinstall Lightroom and get this message above.

[winstond49232361]

I went into Task Manager, deleted the active Adobe Lightroom, went back and ran the Creative Cloud Cleaner tool, and voila!, it works!

Thank you johnrellis and dj_paige,  for your kind and generous support. 

You are invisible from where you are and you have helped someone who was desperate and is now grateful!

[dj_paige]

Turn off OneDrive. If that doesn't work, try restoring a recent backup of your catalog file (unzip the backup, then move it to the location where the original catalog was, then open LrC)

[winstond49232361]

I can see that Lighroom Classic Version 14.3.1 was installed on 10 May 2025.

I'm going to uninstall and reinstall from Creative Cloud