"Lightroom encountered and error when reading from its preview cache and needs to quit"

[KennyBrandon]

I keep receiving this error every time I open LR, "Lightroom encountered and error when reading from its preview cache and needs to quit" and the app won't open. It said LR would try and fix this error next time I opened it but the error remains. I tried uninstalled and installing the app and the error remains.

Any Ideas here? Is there another app that may be telling it where to look for the cache and it no longer there? I was using a ramdisk for a bit but ditched it. Not sure if that has something to do with it but it seems suspect.

Your thoughts?

--Kenny Brandon Wilson

[NanoMyy]

Thanks a lot! Worked just fine and LR starts up again.

LR5 on Win 8.1

[Guest]

hi!

where do i find the catalog folder?

[Acute_Pixel]

Thank you ...fixed. After I tried to retrieve backup files all of the sudden this happen but I'm glad I found your post.  Thanks!

[sh4rkbyt31]

I am having the exact same issue.

This started after I backed up my catalog to the same drive. I have changed the Lightroom 5 Preferences.agprefs to Lightroom 5 Preferences.agprefs OLD as was mentioned. Opened at least 10 times and still having the exact same issue.  I have gone round and round with your tech support before with a different issue related to your software and am not about to go through hours on end again.

[fototrance]

Thank you DJ_Paige!

[Michael___D]

Did it and it didn't correct my issue. Dam. I'll running windows 8 if that makes any deferent’s.

[Frank-Linssen]

It is not a file but a folder of almost 13GB. Do I need to delete this complete folder ?

[adkcamper]

I too have struggled with this issue.  I had all my photos and my catalog on an external drive.  Deleting the preview cache did not fix the problem.  So this week I moved my Lightroom folder (lightroom catalog, previews, etc.) onto my laptop's hard drive.  Have not had a problem since. 

[popsp3520164]

not working!!!!

[dj_paige]

popsp3520164 wrote:

not working!!!!

Could you give us some details?

Did you try the solutions that were already discussed in this thread?

[LaurenKC]

Same here. I tried renaming the file to "Lightroom 5 Preferences.agprefsOLD",however that didn't work. It actually created a second file with the same name and didn't resolve the problem.

[dj_paige]

The advice was to delete the subfolder whose name ends with Previews.LRDATA, as explained in reply #2 of this thread.

[onthlvl]

I have tried all of the solutions in this thread and I continue to get this error.  I can get Lightroom to open but while I am using it the error dialogue box pops up and Lightroom closes.

[dj_paige]

If you have deleted the subfolder whose name ends with Previews.LRDATA and Lightroom opens and then subsequently gives this error, then I would say you have a malfunctioning hard disk, which is causing corruption of the Previews. So I would definitely run diagnostics on your hard disk to see if any problems are found; and probably you will need to replace it.

[onthlvl]

I had seen that in another thread and ran check disk with no errors.  I just recently developed this issue after using Lightroom for a couple of days.  I just recently subscribed and installed it.  I have since reinstalled lightroom and tried all of the fixes I have found, nothing seems to work.  I am thinking it is an Adobe problem.

[francescog61050766]

Hello!

I have the same problem about the "Lightroom encountered and error when reading from its preview cache and needs to quit". I have no problems in launching Lightroom, the problem is that as soon as I start to work on a photo, after a while the same message pops up again. Every single time I have to delete the Preview Cache (Previews.LRDATA) but everytime I re-launch Lightroom, after a couple of photos, it gives the same problem over and over, so now I have this problem that I don't know how to solve. Could you please help me in any way?

Thanks,

Best wishes

Francesco.

[dj_paige]

Your hard disk is having problems. Run diagnostics on your hard disk. Most likely, it needs to be replaced.

[Alex_F2]

At the risk of spamming.....

Hi, I've had exactly the same problem. I went through the usual advice, to no avail. I uninstalled Lightroom and manually deleted every file relating to Lightroom on my HDD. Again, no good. So, I went to use PS and ACR. No problem, until it came to "save as". I then got an error message which led me to this post I went to windows defender (win 10)...

Start> Settings> Windows Defender> OPen Windows Defender Security Centre> Virus & threat protection> Virus & threat protection settings> Controlled folder acess> Allow an app through controlled folder access.

And added PS, Bridge and Lightroom to the list. All errors solved!

Hopefully that's been of help to someone.

[RoyGiffen]

I imported some small catalogs into 1 master catalog and am having this problem.

I have deleted ALL .LRDATA folders on my system.

Renamed the Preferences.agprefs to agprfes.old.

I ran a test on the hard drive - runs clean.

Windows 7 and LR 5.7.1

Any other suggestions?

Thanks

[inshadowz]

I encountered the same error, but due to a different cause, which required a different solution: My cloud backup program scans for file changes in real time and immediately uploads changed files to storage. The problem is that this will lock the files during scan and upload, which effectively blocks Lightroom from reading the file until the backup is done.

Solution: Exclude the folder "Lightroom Catalog Previews.lrdata" from the backup.

Security wise, to exclude the folder from backup isn't critical. After all, the content isn't essential as it will be rebuilt if lost.

[justinm80831668]

AHA!!! This is my solution.

[jacksode]

For any others still having issues with this, I had to delete the actual folders that the previews are located in the previews themselves was not enough.

[neilwaybright]

I too was having this problem, and it was a recent issue.  Mine ended up with the same issue as "inshadow" where my cloud backup program was getting a temporary exclusive lock on the preview and causing this issue.  Going into crashplan and Google "Backup and and Sync" and excluding ".lrprev" files from it's coverage finally cured this issue (which the "preferences deletion" and the "LR preview deletion" had not).  It had got better when I added the exclusion for crashplan, but didn't go away completely until I added the exclusion to Google Backup and Sync.

[davidc72228013]

I've had the cache problem before and fixed it by deleting previews.irdata. This time it hasn't worked and LR will not open, the error appears immediately and I've also tried deleting the whole catalogue folder. As suggested in one of these posts I've renamed Preferences.agprefs to Preferences.agprefsOLD but this had no effect. I am closing LR and restarting my PC each time I try a fix. It also mentioned on here it could be a hard drive issue but I've run Windows error checking via the drives Properties, Tools and Check and no issues have been found. Any ideas?

[dj_paige]

Sure sounds like a hard drive problem to me. Sometimes the Windows error checker doesn't catch it.

If you have a different hard drive, then use your operating system and copy the catalog file (name end with .LRCAT) to a different drive, and then double-click on it to open it. Does the problem go away?

Also, you should be making regular and automated backups of your catalog file ​to a different physical disk​. If you haven't been doing this, NOW is the time to do so.