• Welcome to the Lightroom Queen Forums! We're a friendly bunch, so please feel free to register and join in the conversation. If you're not familiar with forums, you'll find step by step instructions on how to post your first thread under Help at the bottom of the page. You're also welcome to download our free Lightroom Quick Start eBooks and explore our other FAQ resources.
  • Stop struggling with Lightroom! There's no need to spend hours hunting for the answers to your Lightroom Classic questions. All the information you need is in Adobe Lightroom Classic - The Missing FAQ!

    To help you get started, there's a series of easy tutorials to guide you through a simple workflow. As you grow in confidence, the book switches to a conversational FAQ format, so you can quickly find answers to advanced questions. And better still, the eBooks are updated for every release, so it's always up to date.
  • Dark mode now has a single preference for the whole site! It's a simple toggle switch in the bottom right-hand corner of any page. As it uses a cookie to store your preference, you may need to dismiss the cookie banner before you can see it. Any problems, please let us know!

7.3.1 advice needed after 7.3 horror show.

Status
Not open for further replies.

harriettel

New Member
Joined
Apr 17, 2018
Messages
5
Lightroom Experience
Advanced
Lightroom Version
Lightroom Version Number
Lightroom Classic version 7.2
Operating System
  1. Windows 10
Hi, I hope you can help me or advise me what my next steps should be. I was planning to write this post before I became aware of the 7.3.1 release, but now that it is out I will address this post pertaining to that also. I’m hoping by sharing my experience I would be able to receive some advice or understanding of why this behaviour occurred and maybe help anyone else.

My system (built by my husband who has been in the computer industry since the late 70s and has built several machines. We have an in home network that runs through his machine to the internet.): Windows 10, Intel Core i5-7500, 500G SSD, 1TB HDD, 16Gb RAM, Wacom Intuos 5, 2 monitors. The SSD will only hold system, programs, and Lightroom Catalog. The HDD holds all personally generated files. I’m also connected to our network NAS and use an online backup service as well. I’ve been using this machine just since mid-March.

Up until the 7.3 update I had no problems with any program on my new computer, which at that point was mostly graphics/photo programs, also malwarebytes and password safe. I was thrilled with the speed of Lightroom, etc. after using a 5 year old HP laptop. I was very happy with 7.3 after first downloading and used a lot of the new profiles on newly loaded pictures of the ocean. I think I only worked on pictures with the new profiles once and backed up my catalog without a problem. I have never had a corrupt catalog before or any backup problems and have never had to use a backup catalog. My presets were also converted fine. Then the problems started:

  1. Upon opening LR the catalog was said to be corrupt and and wouldn’t repair.
  2. Upon opening Explorer to copy this catalog to a different folder to see if LR would generate a new catalog, I noticed that the lock and wal files were still there. Researched and deleted them and tried to open LR continuing to receive corruption errors. Double-clicking on catalog in Explorer would generate a couldn’t read cache message.
  3. Next, I moved my catalog and preview files into a new folder. Then I tried to use two different backup catalogs (separately without previews) and received the same messages--corrupt or couldn’t read cache, even though there were no previews to read. Also received assertion failed message when trying to run LR as administrator. I’m the only user/administrator on this computer. I had also deleted preferences before trying the backup catalogs. I also removed any 3rd party presets. No joy.
  4. My Google search started and I landed on the Lightroom Queen website and was impressed with the information, so I decided to register. I use a Password Safe that automatically generates passwords and backs up after any change or addition. This is where the problem became weird. The Password Safe wouldn’t backup. This has never happened before either. I wanted to do some more research on this before I posted my problem on your site. I emailed Password Safe and he suggested that it looked like a failing disk issue. This was concerning because I was on a new computer, however I know this can happen so on to the next step.
  5. Before continuing to address the LR problem I wanted to check my system. We ran every system/disk check possible, checked event viewer, malwarebytes, etc. No errors or problems were found. I also checked permissions because of the assertion failed message. Everything was in order. I also updated the graphics driver for my processor. LR would open in Safe Mode but I couldn’t make any test adjustments because LR wouldn’t process any activity in Safe Mode, and since there were no 3rd party presets this showed us nothing. I also opened up several pictures in Camera Raw that I had worked on with the new profiles and made several adjustments with no problems including closing and reopening again through Bridge.
  6. I thought this problem had to be database related because both LR and Password Safe use databases. I did a lot of reading about SQLite and programs that will check the integrity of catalogs, however I didn’t want to go down that road yet. So, I did what I’ve read that seemingly everyone does and decided to uninstall LR and reinstall. I hesitated to do this because even though rebooting a computer sometimes fixes problems I never liked uninstalling and reinstalling programs as a fix. I’ve had Adobe products crash before, but they always open again without problem, and I was using a much older and slower laptop.
  7. So, I uninstalled LR and tried to reinstall. LR would not reinstall at all. This made no sense. We rechecked all permissions and the event viewer and there were no issues. Before the corrupt catalog message, LR 7.3 had crashed several times and I sent crash reports with my email address but heard nothing. It always reopened though until the corrupt message.
  8. So, since this was a new machine and all of my files were on a different drive and everything was backed up, we decided to do a clean install of Windows 10. I had .exe files saved for all of the other programs so there wouldn’t be any problem reloading them except some time spent.
  9. The install went fine. Because of all of these issues I slowly installed programs after addressing some Windows 10 issues, keeping a separate notebook with extensive notes of everything I touched in the system. Lastly I installed Creative Cloud and Photoshop--no problems. I created a restore point and installed LR 7.2. I decided on 7.2 because while researching all of these problems I finally hit the bug issues reported relating to 7.3 and the new profiles and that Adobe was working on a fix.
  10. So with LR 7.2 I decided to use my original supposedly corrupt catalog to test it. LR 7.2 opened with no problems and also had no problem opening my supposedly corrupt catalog including it’s preview folder that I was hoping I did not have to regenerate. I have had no problems since, which has only been a few days. It also backs up without a problem, which I tested several times. Also, my Password Safe file opens, backs up and saves with no problem.
  11. I was getting ready to write this all down to post on your site to see if anyone had insight regarding what I think is a database problem (xml file conversion clobbered my 2 databases, the only 2 files from a program on my SSD) or 7.3 problems in general when I see this morning that there is a fix: 7.3.1.

I usually update right away with no problems but really hesitate this time because I think the problem is more than preset order, and I want to wait to see if any corruption issues occur or they come out with the profile preference choice and proof of stability. This is where I would really like to know what your thoughts are about my odyssey and any advice you could give me regarding Lightroom going forward. Also I was wondering if I should post this on the Lightroom Family site. I like Lightroom and Photoshop and do not want to move to another program. Thank you for any help you can give me and reading this long post, but I wanted to be thorough.
 
Thanks for the help. I too am paranoid about backups and have several practices also, so I will definitely continue to backup my catalog manually also.
 
Yes, as best I understand, the corruption of the LR produced backups pre-dated 7.3. That 7.3.1 was rushed out to fix the backup problem was because it was discovered and fixed too late for 7.3, not because it was caused by 7.3; that and the fact that 7.3's handling of profiles and presets and such was not really stable and need some corrections.
If that is the case why is it that this issue really only seemed to come to light after 7.3 or was it a storm brewing ?
 
It was a storm brewing.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top