New Laptop coming at $2300 expense due to programming issue with LR

[jjlad]

Lightroom Version Number

10.1.1

Operating System

1. Windows 10

Been having issues with LR crashing my computer when exporting files. It pins the CPU at 100% and then the temperatures of the CPU, GPU and Motheboard all start rising fast to 100 degrees Celsius and above and the laptop crashes totally. It appears this has irrevocably damaged my computer CPU and possibly other components.

I used to be able to take a combination of say 1000 jpg, nef and tiff images from a given month, and export them all as jpgs with all edits, into a new sub folders for each day, called "Archived jpgs". I would set the export to simultaneously import them back into the catalog. On completion I would delete all the selected images and then daily folder by daily folder ...move the new ones into the original folders and delete the Archived Jpgs folders. That part went pretty quick.

A week or so ago that process started to slow down dramatically. The import into the catalog portion would almost suspend while the export was going on and after the export completed ...would import one photo every 3 seconds or so. The archived photos are only 4-6 mb in size so LR was importing them at less than 2 mb per second. Really painful.

I changed the export preset to export only and selected only 50-100 photos at a time but that still heats up the laptop to where the CPU is at 100% and 100c and the GPU is at 95-100c and the mainboard is at 95c, but for shorter periods. After exporting I import all the photos created, and that happens in the time it was taking to import 2 or 3 photos with the “Add to Catalog” option checked. Then I delete all the originals then folder by folder ...move the new ones into the original folders and delete the Archived Jpgs folders. I also have my laptop resting on a frozen cooler ice pack to help get cooler air into the fans. That is helping but still, if I try the Export/Import combination my system still crashes.

My existing laptop isn't poorly spec'd:

HP Envy 17" with 2.40 gigahertz Intel Core i7-4700MQ
Windows 10 Home 19041.804
16g ram (that's max)
1 TB SSD plus 1TB HDD
Intel(R) HD Graphics 4600 [Display adapter]
NVIDIA GeForce GT 740M [Display adapter] (good at the time but impossible with latest Adobe program updates)
The laptop ram and SSD upgrades were done to help LR and Photoshop work better. The laptop itself was an upgrade from an earlier Presario, solely to handle LR and PS better and thanks to ever more performance defeating editions of PS and LR, the Graphics card is no longer powerful enough to even process Select and Mask in Photoshop, despite Sky Replacement working instantly!

I searched online and got nothing but very bad news about this so I had a technician (who comes Lysol sprayer in hand, masked and with new rubber gloves).
He confirmed my fan and cooling ducts were clean and made sure nothing else was running other than my Performance Monitor. He then watched me try an export using the Add to Catalog option.
The laptop totally crashed 1 minute into it.

The tech informed me if I wanted to continue using LR in batch mode like that I'd have to get a new laptop because the existing one has suffered irreparable damage and further use like that would probably fry it totally. He said with the repetition of doing that batch processing in LR the damage became cumulative and the processor would never perform to its full capability again. He said there is no sense spending $500-$700 to repair a 5yr old laptop.

HP told me flat out that running a CPU at 100% is not recommended. Doing so repeatedly would certainly lead to premature processor failure.

So thanks to Adobe programming Lightroom to pin the CPU at 100%, it is necessary for me to buy a new laptop.
I ordered a 17" HP OMEN with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 graphics, 16g DDR4 ram and a very intensive cooling system. It is also $2300 including tax and a 3 year service and damage warranty (refundable if not used).

I've read some other threads on this where Guru’s reported that Adobe decided to program LR to use 100% of the CPU for exports BECAUSE USERS WANT THIS.
So I guess I'm confused as to who to thank for having to spend all this money ...Adobe or Lightroom users who like to run with their CPU's pinned and just haven't YET suffered catastrophic CPU degradation because of it. To all those I say "Thanks folks, hope the same thing happens to you!"

 

[PhilBurton]

got a phone call b4 finishing that....
Working on how to replace the 1TB HDD in the new one with the 8 month old 1 TB SSD from this old one. I'm sure I'll know more by the end of the day but for now it's a challenge.

This cable may be very useful. You will also need some kind of migration software, which should be provided by the SSD manufacturer.

Be sure to make a full backup of the SSD before proceeding. Macrium Reflect Free is highly recommended and easy to use. If there is a problem with the SDD copy, then just use Macrium to restore its original contents.

 

[PhilBurton]

This cable may be very useful. You will also need some kind of migration software, which should be provided by the SSD manufacturer.

Be sure to make a full backup of the SSD before proceeding. Macrium Reflect Free is highly recommended and easy to use. If there is a problem with the SDD copy, then just use Macrium to restore its original contents.

Forgot to include the link for the cable. StarTech USB 3.0 to 2.5" SATA III Hard Drive Adapter Cable - Newegg.com

Phil

 

[Denis de Gannes]

First thing I would try is to revert from LrC 10.1.1 to LrC 10.0, and turn of the GPU acceleration, there is a bug that was introduced by the 10.1 update.
ACR has been updated recently to 13.2 earlier the week and LrC should be released soon.
The only thing that is missing in the info here is specifically how much free disk space is available on the disk drives involved, where you OS is and where the files are being exported to.
Are the any other applications running when you are exporting.

 

[englishsteve]

One thing to note about laptops in general - consumer laptops are almost never made or even designed by the company whose name is on the lid. This applies to all manufacturers, not just HP.

When a computer brand is looking for a new consumer laptop, they generally put out a tender to multiple actual manufacturers (most of whom you will never have heard of) and they pick the one that best fits the aim of that product line. What this means, in practice, is that there is little consistency in drivers, hardware or reliability between models in the same range.

My advice has always been that if you want a reliable laptop, buy something from the business or mobile workstation ranges of one of the major PC manufacturers. This means that a) it will actually have been designed by the engineers at that company, b) will be built either by them or at an exclusive subcontract factory and c) you have a chance that drivers and parts will be available longer than the warranty period. You will pay more, but you will get a much better product.

Note that this does not apply to Apple laptops, their entire range is more akin to the business ranges of the PC manufacturers from the dev process perspective.

Source: I worked in this industry for many years

 

[jjlad]

As I mentioned above, it is quite interesting to read Notebookcheck reviews as they test for both heat and performance, and they often talk about how companies will throttle CPUs to prevent them from cooking. And my understanding of thermal paste is that it either gets old or dries out and becomes ineffective. Now that I think about it, it is unusual that the OP's machine did not throttle the CPU, or if it did, then there was an other issue with thermal dissipation. Then again, I am not a technician, so my advice could be worth less than its weight in salt.

--Ken

It's great that you do a lot of sharing, and exporting to drives works fine, but do know that you can also share Smart previews on the web if that is more convenient (albeit less permanent if something should happen to your CC subscription). But, I do question the re-importing of the jpeg files. In my workflow, any file that I export, what I call a derivative, is expendable and can quickly be deleted, as it can easily be reproduced from the catalog. Have you considered this approach?

It may also be possible that any thermal paste on or around the CPU has dried up or is no longer effective. I cannot say for certain in this case, but I can see something like this happening. In any event, we do not know for certain without seeing the machine, so the recommendation of a different technician is reasonable if it is possible. Then again, we are talking about a 4th generation i7 chip. Not exactly a spring chicken.

--Ken

Thanks for the response. I export to 12"x12" jpgs at 240. Big enough for them to use any way they want and still good enough to become my new "originals" in my catalog. I've found in the past that I seldom completely start over with edits. The process eliminates the tiffs and raw files and just gives me fairly compact jpgs to lug into eternity, edit again if I get so inclined, and/or pass off for my offspring.

 

[LRList001]

I'm reading this and the laptop has been updated so many times, it isn't really a OEM laptop at all. If it turns out that all those modifications have taken it out of the manufacturer's assumptions and design decisions about how it will be used, I'm no longer reading about a problem with either the original HP laptop, nor how well (or badly) an OEM HP laptop runs LR. Am I missing something here?

 

[jjlad]

I'm reading this and the laptop has been updated so many times, it isn't really a OEM laptop at all. If it turns out that all those modifications have taken it out of the manufacturer's assumptions and design decisions about how it will be used, I'm no longer reading about a problem with either the original HP laptop, nor how well (or badly) an OEM HP laptop runs LR. Am I missing something here?

Thanks for the interest in this. You're right. The old laptop definitely underwent lots of surgery.
I got my new laptop.
It came with 16g of ram and I've upgraded to 64g
It also came with a 256g NVMe M.2 main drive plus a 1tb HDD for data.
There are two NVMe M.2 drive slots so I added a 2 tb NVMe M.2 drive which is now D and will use that for data.
I also replaced the 1TB HDD with the 1 TB SSD which was the C:\ drive in my old laptop. I copied all my data from it to the new 2 TB D drive and pointed all my Windows 10 library shortcuts there. That old laptop's SSD (which is now E) is fairly new so I'll just use it for additional storage ...perhaps just videos.

I did new installs of Creative Cloud, CR, PS and LR Cl, so all that is up and running. I opened LR from the old LR catalog and had to point it to where the photos now reside since they are on different drive letters than before.

That's done and LR seems to be working 'ok' but often it suddenly opens an import dialog for no reason and displays this message:

It is referring Users\Jay\ but the new laptop automatically assigned the name Users\jjayl to me (first 5 characters of my regular email address) so the problem LR is having is referring to my OLD laptop. Is it be getting that from the catalog which I copied to D and opened from there?
If so why would it do that after having been pointed to the new locations and working fine on those until it suddenly wants to go into Import mode?
This happens a lot and 50% of the time it crashes Lightroom so solidly that I have to close it from Task Manager and re-start after which it is OK until it does it again.

I also had a weird thing happen where an entire folder of images ended up with at least one dup of each image and in some cases 2.
The affected folders are on an external drive ...which I had to point LR to so the images showed up without the "?".

The originals all have names like:
JJL_6045.JPG

Many dups have names with an underscore in front and one letter missing like
_JL6030.JPEG

Other dups (almost the same number as the originals) have names like
JPEG Image (176842).jpg

In many cases the originals with "JJL_" prefix disappeared.
To sort it out I selected all the "_JL" photos and flagged them Red. Then I selected all the "JPEG Image (######).jpg" pictures and flagged them Blue.
I then sorted by date and that clearly showed the duplicates in their colors.
To clean it up I had to make sure I had one valid photo of each ....and many times there was only the two dup name conventions so I kept the one with the "JPEG Image " prefix because there were more of those than the "_JL" prefix. I then deleted all those with the _JL prefix and the remaining duplicates with the "JPEG Image" prefix.
Now I'm left with about 70 images in that folder but at least there's only one of each.

The other weird thing is all my edits have been incorporated into the photos. The whole folder was an airshow and the photos are cropped, sharpened and toned ...I know that because I edited all of them, but the edit history is gone. I eventually archive my images with edits incorporated but that year had not yet come up for that, so the edits should still have been there. There're ok as is but I'm puzzled as to how this could happen. It's like there's a Lightroom gremlin bouncing around creating havoc in my new laptop.

I've only discovered the duplications in two Months worth of images but Lightroom's incessant insistence on importing from the C drive on my old laptop which is no longer in the catalog, and then crashing, makes me think that has something to do with it.

When I would right click on a dup and "Show in Explorer", they showed up in same folder as the originals and they weren't there prior to installing LR on the new laptop ....so I'm confused on this whole thing.

I have never saved or renamed any photos with names like the duplicates. They were generated by some mystery process unknown to me.

Perhaps there's a reason the new laptop is called OMEN??

 

[Victoria Bampton]

That's done and LR seems to be working 'ok' but often it suddenly opens an import dialog for no reason and displays this message:
View attachment 16329

It is referring Users\Jay\ but the new laptop automatically assigned the name Users\jjayl to me (first 5 characters of my regular email address) so the problem LR is having is referring to my OLD laptop. Is it be getting that from the catalog which I copied to D and opened from there?
If so why would it do that after having been pointed to the new locations and working fine on those until it suddenly wants to go into Import mode?

If you haven't run any imports on this machine yet, it's probably defaulting to the last used destination on the old machine. As to why import keeps popping up, something attached to the machine that's on autoplay... phone connected, printer with a memory card slot, network storage, something like that which makes Lightroom think you want to import?

The other weird thing is all my edits have been incorporated into the photos. The whole folder was an airshow and the photos are cropped, sharpened and toned ...I know that because I edited all of them, but the edit history is gone. I eventually archive my images with edits incorporated but that year had not yet come up for that, so the edits should still have been there. There're ok as is but I'm puzzled as to how this could happen. It's like there's a Lightroom gremlin bouncing around creating havoc in my new laptop.

No history would suggest the photos have either been imported today or at some point in the past... is there an import step with a date listed in the History panel?

 

[jjlad]

Thanks for getting back to me Victoria! Didn't expect that.
Regarding drives, I have been connecting external drives and or switching them on or off using the connection buttons on my 10 port USB hub.
as well as an external drive that connected via USB-C. I didn't necessarily have LR running when connecting/disconnecting drives, and what was connected could have changed between times LR was opened. That's been SOP for me for some time. Not all my drives tie into LR ...I basically limit that to my Pictures folder now on D (internal) and a large external drive for archives. I have another external for File History (the Windows app), and the rest of them are for data for other pursuits and are connected via switch as I need them. I haven't inserted a camera card in the new laptop yet. I have connected my phone to that USB hub but only for charging when the laptop was turned off or 'asleep' overnight.

I deleted as many dups as I could and emptied my recycle bin so can't check all of them, however all the images remaining in that folder show only one import date ...in 2018, and no recorded changes after that date.

This is puzzling since I'd been in that folder doing edits to images since then ...even in 2020, but the file dates on disk match what LR shows, so no idea how they all got to the state they are in now and got the oddball names. My catalog was copied to my Pictures folder on D from the old laptop's hard drive and was the latest catalog for sure since it does contain images taken just before I pulled the drive from the old laptop.

The naming conventions are like nothing I've ever used and are not found anywhere else. I've searched through all my images for those naming conventions and they occur only in the one folder.

This is in File Explorer. My normal naming convention is the first one, and all the other are weirdos.

Here's more from further down in that folder which show that even my normal naming convention JJL_#### has been truncated in the front, reducing it to JL_####. I have eliminated some with the JPEG Image prefix and all those with an _JL prefix and kept what I could to end up with ONE edition of each photo. My original JJL_#### named images are entirely gone from anywhere in that folder except for .

There are 3 sub folders within the main folder for that shoot. In all there are 1277 images
551 are with my normal naming convention with my "JJL_" prefix
665 have the "JPEG Image" prefix
61 have the "_JL" prefix
When I discovered all this there were nearly 1600 images overall and I've deleted all the dups I could. I didn't delete any with my normal 'JJL_" prefix and it took nearly 4 hours to end up with just one of each. Admittedly some of that time was spent just scratching my head trying to figure out how to tackle the problem.

I can live with them as is (kind of accept them as archived), recognizing my curiosity as to how they got that way may never be satisfied.
Prior to that folder and following that folder all my images taken with my DSLR's have the normal JJL_#### naming convention unless shot on a phone or other P&S camera.

Anyway, I'm more or less up and running and will just live with what I have there. All the affected images are from an airshow. The only other thing I'd like to do with some of them is Super Resolution them, so as to crop the sometimes far away subject with better resolution. Since Super Resolution doesn't work in, with or from Lightroom, I find that process o clumsy (especially for jpegs), that I'll wait until Adobe integrates it better or else just get Gigapixel AI, which quite surprisingly, does integrate with Lightroom. Hopefully Adobe will catch up to Topaz on that before too long and an additional investment in that plugin won't be necessary. I've kind of splurged on hardware lately.

Thanks for trying to help on the file thing. I'm just going to put the Mystery wrapper on it and carry on with what I have.

Regards, Jay