Lightroom hangs during import from an SD card

[J Isner]

This is probably the 1000th post with a similar title.  I have read those posts and tried some of the suggestions, to no avail.

I recently upgraded my PC from Windows 7 to Windows 10.  I did not have this problem on Windows 7. I'm running Lightroom Classic (v8.3) on the new OS.

The behavior is as follows:

1. Start Lightroom
2. Insert an SD card into either a USB 3.0 card reader or into the PC's card reader slot (it doesn't make any difference).  It also doesn't make any difference if I insert the card BEFORE I start Lightroom
3. Click the Import button
4. There's now a long pause (from 30 seconds to several minutes) until the import window comes up.
5. The thumbnails are displayed very quickly, regardless of how many files I have on the card (which is good!)
6. However after displaying the thumbnails, Lightroom becomes unresponsive.  Sometimes I see "Lightroom is not responding" in the title bar.  If I hover the mouse over the window, I get the blue Windows "busy" cursor
7. I wait for Lightroom to become responsive (from 30 seconds to several minutes)
8. Finally Lightroom becomes responsive and I am able to complete the import

Lightroom has no other performance issues.

I unchecked 'use GPU' in the performance preference, restarted Lightroom, and tried again.  The behavior is the same.

I wonder if the problem is Windows 10, since these delays involve interaction with the Windows file system.  Could it be a problem with system security?  I'm running Windows Defender and Malwarebytes. 

[Jao vdL]

I'm running Windows Defender and Malwarebytes.

Can you try turning these off or at least exclude the Lightroom catalog files and location where the images are copied to? It is likely that these are the culprits

[J Isner]

I added .ARW and .NEF as excluded file extensions in Windows Defender (those are the file types on my SD cards).  I think it may have helped.  The import window still takes a relatively long time to launch (15-20 seconds), but after that it responds quickly.  At least Lightroom does not hang.  Malwarebytes does not have exclusions that relate to this scenario.  For example, it would be nice if it let you exclude data coming in on SD cards.

[Jao vdL]

You might also want to exclude lrcat files

[J Isner]

Since I did not notice a significant improvement after excluding ARW and NEF, I decided to try import with security completely turned off.  I turned off both Windows Defender and Malwarebytes.  Import still hung, so I'm assuming security is not the problem.

[AxelMatt]

Take a look here: Lightroom Classic very slow import. Solved!

[J Isner]

I tried running Lightroom with all external drives unplugged and no SD card inserted.  When I clicked Import, Lightroom hung for several minutes before the import window became responsive.

[Joe Foe Toe]

After some similar issues long ago, I changed my workflow to moving the image files to PC first, then importing them from the PC. An extra step, but much faster for me.

[J Isner]

The import window takes a long time to launch (Lightroom not responding) even before it shows me my devices and folders.  So it wouldn't make any difference if I imported from the file system rather than importing from an SD card.

[J Isner]

Solution found!

As I mentioned in the OP, I have been running Lightroom Classic (v8.3).

To see if the problem is a bug in v8.3, I tried importing in Lightroom Classic CC (v8.2.1). 

The import screen opened almost immediately.  Lightroom did not hang for even a second.

It looks like there is an import bug in Lightroom Classic (v8.3)

I will make a bug report at feedback.photoshop.com.

[J Isner]

Oops, I was too quick declaring victory.  After more experience using v8.2.1, I'm finding that it too hangs when I click import (Lightroom not responding in title bar, blue circular cursor) as well as synchronize folder.  However v8.2.1 does not hang for nearly as long as v8.3.

[J Isner]

Some encouraging results.  I think the problem is not Lightroom, but rather Windows 10.  When you import, Lightroom must ask Windows to tell it everything on the computer (files and devices), and I think this is where the delay occurs.  You can test this by opening File Explorer and selecting "This PC".  You'll get a long delay as a green "progress" bar moves slowly across the address bar.  I think this is what's happening underneath Import.

So I looked for suggestions to speed up File Explorer.  One suggestion was to disable Cortana.  After doing so, File Explorer displayed the contents of "This PC" very quickly.  I restarted Lightroom and clicked Import.  The import window came up immediately with the left panel fully populated.

Again, it may be too early to declare victory.  I need to work with Lightroom a while and make sure this test wasn't a fluke.

[GoldingD]

Ah, yes, a “smart personal assistant”.

Did not MS get rid of a smiling paper click years ago for the same reasons? Slowing things down.

Additional options that get in the way:

Windows 10 quick tips: 12 ways to speed up your PC | Computerworld

https://www.cnet.com/how-to/10-things-to-disable-in-windows-10/