Lightroom Desktop freezes (then crashes) when the "What's New Feb 2025" window appears

[matthew_5332]

What information do you need?  PC Specs?  Logs?

It just crashes when the "What's New" window appears.  It keeps happening every time I launch the app too because I never have a chance to dismiss the window.  The crash report window appears the next time I start the app, but I don't have enough time to submit before it crashes again.

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

It is recommended that you do a clean reinstall and then a preference reset.

Clean Lightroom Install Procedure

• Close Lightroom
• Restart the computer
• Use the Adobe Creative Cloud App to uninstall Lightroom
• Restart the computer
• Install Lightroom via the Creative Cloud App without launching any other programs.
• Restart the computer
• Launch Lightroom
• Wait 5 minutes

This procedure works for both Lightroom Classic and Lightroom Desktop.

If you are using Lightroom Desktop, it can change your local storage location. Please review this setting after resetting preferences. 

Reset Procedure:

1. Close Lightroom.

2. Hold down [Alt/Opt]+[Shift] while restarting Lightroom.

3. Overwrite the Preferences when prompted by the dialog.

4. Close Lightroom.

5. Restart Lightroom.

If after this, you do not see any improvement, Windows Updates and Video Driver updates would be next on the list of troubleshooting. 

[matt_4572]

Hi Rikk,

I'm replying from my work account, which is the one getting the crashes.  I've gone ahead and tried everything you suggested, including the ALT+Shift preferences reset.  I am also up to date on Windows with the latest Nvidia Studio Drivers (572.16).  Still getting the same crash on startup. 

One thing to note is that this accound has a lot of shared albums with my personal account, so that could be a contributing factor.  Meaning the albums are created by my personal account and shared with my work account.

I wanted to reply from this account because I was able to send a crash report with this account last week.  Hopefully somebody could take a look at that.

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

I've checked under both email addresses and have found no crash reports received from either. 

The next time you experience a crash, fill out the dialog-including your email address, screenshot the dialog, submit the dialog, and then post the screenshot here in this thread. 

Thanks!

[matthew_5332]

Rikk,

The problem is that it crashes before I can write any real description in the crash dialogue.  The one I thought I got off had "What's New" as the description.  Maybe it wasn't able to send before the app froze up.

Is that crash log stored locally?  If so, could you tell me where it'd be so I can attach it here?

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

In this case, the description is not necessary. Try it again and submit it as fast as you can (with the email filled out). Unfortunately, a Crash Report on your local system does not give us the same information as what we get when you submit it via the reporter dialog.  

[matthew_5332]

Ok, I tried submitting another one.  It'd be from the other account (sorry for switching back and forth).

[matthew_5332]

I decided to let it sit there for an hour and it finally responded, I was able to close the "What's New" window.  Since it doesn't try to open anymore, the app is now functioning like normal.

[matthew_5332]

Scratch that.  It worked fine for a bit, then crashed when I clicked the remove tool.  Now it's started crashing again on startup.

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

I am still not finding anything under your email, @matthew_5332  or @matt_4572 
How about a video showing the crash report dialog? Is it possible to capture that?