Problem with memory and saving book

[DotP]

Lightroom Version

Lightroom Classic 7.5

Operating System

Lightroom just crashed while I backing up the catalog. When I reopened LR, only 92 out of 240 pages the of book I'm working on have been saved.

Yesterday I installed Norton Security, and soon LR was not responding and I had messages that applications didn’t have enough memory. I also (mistakenly, in retrospect) used the “Clean“ feature of Norton. Many photos and other files went into the trash. Some of the photos were needed in my book project in LR. The latest backup had only saved the book up to page 92. The system info. showed virtual memory use in the negative numbers.

Today I uninstalled Norton. I picked through the trash and restored many files to their original spots. I opned LR from a backup from earlier yesterday. I have not reinstalled Lightroom Classic 7.5. It seemed to be working till this crash. (This is after problems with 8 not saving the book correctly. I recently rolled back to 7.5 at the Lightroom Queen's suggestion.)

The current system info. shows:
Built-in memory: 16,384.0 MB
Real memory available to Lightroom: 16,384.0 MB
Real memory used by Lightroom: 699.9 MB (4.2%)
Virtual memory used by Lightroom: 104.6 MB
Memory cache size: 43.1MB

I reported the above to Adobe via the window that popped up after the crash. The immediate answer that came back was that they didn't have a solution or workaround. Hopefully someone there will read it.

I am on the verge of finishing the book. I need to send it to print tomorrow without further mishap. Is it advisable to reinstall Lightroom Classic 7.5? Would it help to upgrade from OS Sierra to High Sierra or Mojave now, instead of waiting till this book project is complete? Would either of those solutions possibly restore something the Norton clean sweep swept out of use?

Does anyone know if the size of a book has anything to do with Lightroom not saving properly? My book is at the Blurb limit of 240 pages, with lots of text, photos, and formatting.

 

[DotP]

Success: I uninstalled and reinstalled LR Classic 7.5. I relaunched LR from a Dec. 6 backup. All the book is there, and changes are there when I close and reopen LR.

But there are weird things going on.. When I reopen LR, it opens to a catalog with only 92 pages and without my edits, every time. I have deleted the problem backups. LR does not open to the version currently in use. I have a workaround: relaunch the backup that I'm using and that saves the changes, or just keep Lightroom open.

Also unusual, my computer opened today to disk utility and wanted me to use First-aid to repair the hard drive.

I'll do some reading on backups in Victoria's FAQ book. I'm wondering if the catalog I am using needs renaming, so Lightroom knows which one to use.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

In the Lightroom preferences, you can set which catalog should be opened: a specific one, the last used one, or ask.

 

[DotP]

Thank you! I replaced the catalog and reset which one should be opened. Lightroom is now opening with the correct catalog, and now saving the one I am working on. It helped to review how catalogs and backups work.

 

[Philippe Coudé du Foresto]

Instead of lauching the LR program directly, I prefer to use a shortcut ( alias on Mac) that points to the catalog itself. I've also a shortcut to a test catalog and that way I'm sure that LR always open the correct catalog.