LR Classic v9.4 - Can't open ANY catalog. Please help!

[Stefano PHOTOGRAPHY]

First time visit to this forum.

I am using Windows 10.

After the lastest upgrade v9.4, I encountered following problem. I had uninstalled and re-installed to no avail.

I even did a System Restore to a previous update, nothing works.

Error message: Unexpected error opening catalog

The catalog could not be opened due to an unexpected error.

"Choose a Different Catalog", still does not work!

Appreciate any help. Thanks.

[dj_paige]

Find a recent backup of your catalog file. Unzip the catalog and place it in a different folder than the original and try to open it from this different folder. If that doesn't work, unzip the catalog again and put it on a different disk, and open it from this different disk.

[Stefano PHOTOGRAPHY]

Thank you for your quick suggestion.

In fact, I had done exactly as you suggested, but to no avail!

In other words, LR Classic does not even open by itself without a file (.lrcat).

[dj_paige]

In other words, LR Classic does not even open by itself without a file (.lrcat).

I'm not sure what this means, but it doesn't sound like you did what I suggested. When you unzipped the backup catalog and placed it somewhere on a different disk than the original, did you double-click on the backup catalog to open it?

[Stefano PHOTOGRAPHY]

Yes, I got what you said.

Unzipped file from one disk, drageed it to another disk and double click to open it. Immediately I got the error message as stated in first post.

Sorry that I was not clear about this, "In other words, LR Classic does not even open by itself without a file (.lrcat)."

When I had trouble opening the lrcat file (already unzipped) by double clicking OR right click on file name and select "open with" Lightroom Classic, I sometimes just click open Lrw (the app icon), from there go to File, => open (followed by browsing and locating the subject lrcat file to open). Sometimes this works for me.

Separately, I tried to open a different catalog, following what you had suggested, now this file gave me a different error message, "The Lightroom catalog name "xxxx" cannot be opened because it is too new to be used by this version of Lightroom. Would you like to select a different catalog? If I click "Choose a Diffeent Catalog", then the entire process repeated itself again.

Bottom line, I can not open any catalog in all manners that I knew how. I have been using LR for years.

Thanks again for you offer of help.

[GoldingD]

Verify what version of Lightroom you are using.

Also verify that you do not have more than one version installed

The issue with a catalog being too new implies you have or had a newer version of Lightroom, one that was a major upgrade, and now you are trying to use an older version of Lightroom to open a catalog from the newer version.

For example, you had v9, and now you have v8 or older. 

[Stefano PHOTOGRAPHY]

David,

Thanks for chiming in. Yes, I do have 2 older versions of LR. I will uninstall them.

I had been using v9.3. Trouble came when I upgraded to v9.4

[GoldingD]

And try creating a new cstalog.

[Stefano PHOTOGRAPHY]

Good news to report:

I performed another (did one before) System Recovery (or Restore). Uninstall and re-install v9.4. Now Lrw is working.

Thank you everyone for helping. Appreciate your time.