LR5 seems to be reinstalling itself

[Gracehoper]

Hello All!

I seem to have hit quite a serious problem.

I have been using LR5 since 2015.

I think I may have over 30,000 images.

I am running it on a PC with MS Windows 7 Professional, service pack 1 build 7601.

Yesterday LR5 seemed to freeze. It has been quite slow showing previews lately. I did not pay a lot of attention to details of what led up to the freeze. I ended up rebooting the PC then left it until today.

When I run LR5 today, it seems to be at the point of a new install. It prompts for country which I enter, then it prompts for serial number which I do not remember.

I think I need to be doing something different rather than figuring out how to start from scratch!

Does anyone have advice please on the best way to resolve this?

Kind regards,

Nick Sergeant

{Moved from Lightroom Cloud to Lightroom Classic Forum by Moderator} 

[kentdesign]

I am a Mac person, so not sure about your windows OS, however, to allay your fears:

your images are not lost. The images themselves are not stored in Lightroom and the LR Catalog is just a catalog - a data base listing the images and the edits you have performed.

[TheDigitalDog]

In addition to the last post, when Lightroom Classic crashes, best to reset preferences:

https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/help/setting-preferences-lightroom.html

[Per Berntsen]

When I run LR5 today, it seems to be at the point of a new install. It prompts for country which I enter, then it prompts for serial number which I do not remember.

By @Gracehoper

I don't know why Lightroom is acting like it's a new install. 

But to be able to use it, you will need to enter the serial number. If you registered LR 5 with Adobe, log into your account at adobe.com, click on Plans, then on Products, where LR 5 will be listed with the serial number.

You can also find the serial number in a file on your computer named Lightroom 5.0 Registration.lrreg, which is located in

C:\ProgramData\Adobe\Lightroom. Open the file with a plain text editor, like Notepad.

[Abambo]

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@Gracehoper wrote:

When I run LR5 today, it seems to be at the point of a new install. It prompts for country which I enter, then it prompts for serial number which I do not remember.

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Serial numbers should always be kept at a safe place. I have a simple notepad text file with all the products and the serial numbers I acquired. Most won't install today. But yes, I agree, the advice comes late.

Best news from Lightroom is what @kentdesign told you: You pictures won't be lost, but better: even your edits will survive even if Lr (your version) fails to start. Be sure, however to keep backups of your pictures and the catalog files.

[Gracehoper]

Thank you all for helpful comments.

I did find the serial number in an email from Adobe -- the .lrreg file I could not find.

And once I entered it, the catalogue was all still there.

Thanks again.

[Michael J. Hoffman]

Glad to hear you got it working!

[kentdesign]

hooray!