Recently Corrupted Catalog

[africalass]

Lightroom Version Number

Lightroom Classic Desktop 9.4

Operating System

1. Windows 10

Hi all!

I have used LR for many years, usually on a daily basis. Some professional work, but also a lot for just personal use. I maintain it well, have it set to remind me about optimise/back-up every shut down, which I do probably once a week or so.

A couple of days ago it suddenly crashed on me. Initially I just tried basic shutting down and restarting etc. When it continued to crash every use I then went to next steps. I turned the GPU use in Lightroom from auto to off. I deleted the preferences file (I have backups). It still crashed every time. I suspected it could be a sync issue as some of the extra long photos on my phone were in my online account but hadn't come to my computer. Therefore I deleted all photos in my online account so there was nothing to sync. It didn't seem to work immediately and I found three old partially synced photos, which I deleted, and then it was showing up correctly as up to date, nothing uploading/downloading. However, it still crashed every time. I tried rolling back to 9.3 and re-deleting preferences. Still crashing. I tried completely uninstalling, and then manually deleting everything in Local/Roaming. The only things I didn't delete were the catalogue itself and items in the same folder (the Lightroom Settings Folder, elaremessages, helper.lrdata, previews.lrdata and sync.lrdata folders). I then reinstalled 9.4. Still crashing. I have tried leaving sync on pause, in case it was that, but that made no difference. I have tried closing antivirus etc.

I thought I'd check with a second catalogue I have. This seems to work without crashing (I was surprised as I had thought it was the system as I had no messages about corrupt catalogue, and it had successfully optimised the main catalogue recently). This leaves me thinking that there must be either an issue with my main catalogue, something within it (such as corrupted images) or it is a sync issue not resolved by having nothing to sync (as my second catalogue isn't set up to sync).

By 'crash' I mean that when I started LR I could do some things as normal for several minute, but then got the crash report message. The only other thing I have noticed is that in Windows Task Manager it described Lightroom's status as 'suspended'.

After going through this process many times I suddenly got a message that it couldn't read the catalogue - it tried to repair on restart, but couldn't.

Whilst trying to sort this I was reading through advice on this forum and discovered that sometimes someone here is willing to receive a zipped catalogue to check. I wanted to know if this was at all possible, just to know if there is any hope! If it isn't possible I understand.

I would appreciate any advice whatsoever. Specs are below. I've not recently done anything unusual in LR - this last week I have been tagging, deleting and a bit of editing. Nothing unusual on my computer, and everything else is working fine. I did notice there was a Nvidia GEForce experience update a week ago - but it continued to work fine for several days after this (and I've switched off GPU).

I do have a -wal file that didn't disappear.

I do have a backup catalogue from a few days ago and another from the other week. I don't know how far back the corruption goes though and if they are impacted.

Thank you for your time and any help at all. Much appreciated.

Specs:

• LR Classic CC 9.4
• Main Catalogue c36,000 images.
• Windows 10 Home (10.0.18363)
• Nvidia GTX 1050Ti 4gb
• 16GB RAM
• i7-7700HQ
• McAfee Total Protection
• MalwareBytes

* I did post this initially on another forum, but the corrupt catalog message only came up after I did that. I have discussed & said on there that I am seeking help elsewhere so no-ones time is wasted.

 

[robashcroftwales]

How big is your previews file in the Lightroom folder? 36k images is a lot.

Have you tested the integrity of the catalog? EDIT/CATALOG SETTINGS and backup catalog next time you quit. Then exit LR with opt to test integrity.

 

[africalass]

Hi Rob! Thanks for getting back to me.
I've had far larger catalogues without issue. The previews file is large, but I believe I can just delete it and it shouldn't impact on the catalogue at all.

I exit Lightroom in this way every week, so the catalogue should be fully checked for integrity and optimised - any corruption has happened within the past few days - unless Lightroom has a bug that doesn't alert you to issues as they arise.

I can no longer open Lightroom to do this again.

Thanks.

 

[robashcroftwales]

You say you have a few backup catalogs. Have you tried using one of them to establish if that fixes the problem. I have never had to do this myself, but the whole point of having backup catalogs is perhaps for situations such as this. If it were me I'd copy the current catalog somewhere else and then reinstate the latest backup.

Have you had any system (PC) crashes recently? Power outage etc?

 

[africalass]

Hi!

I've not had any issues with computer at all recently like that.

I do have some backups, but only want to try this once I've examined other options.

My big concern is that Lightroom did not seem to recognise any issue or corruption with the catalogue even once the crashing started happening suddenly two days ago. Even after it had crashed a significant number of times, I was able in the middle of this to shut down the catalogue and do a full back-up alongside the check for integrity/optimisation with no error message. If it didn't notice there was an issue then, then either there was another fault that isn't corrupt catalogue related, or Lightroom was unable to see the corruption. But if that is the case, then the backup from the week before could also be corrupt.

That was why I was hoping I could find someone who understands the system behind the user dialogues to check the catalogue and see what they can discover - or otherwise to look at backups and see if they are corrupt before I reinstall one of them and try and re-do all the lost work.

Thanks.

 

[clee01l]

I do have some backups, but only want to try this once I've examined other options.

My big concern is that Lightroom did not seem to recognise any issue or corruption with the catalogue

Opening another catalog is going to tell you if the issue is with the current master catalog. Starting a new empty catalog and importing a few images into it will tell you if there is a problem with the Lightroom app files or something else.

For a start I'd disable and quit following and restart:

• McAfee Total Protection
• MalwareBytes
• Windows Defender (if you still have that running)

You do not need all of these Malware apps active. You should only need and use one malware app. They could be in conflict with each other and preventing Lightroom Classic from accessing the files that it needs.

If without any malware interfering, your master catalog still causes crashes, then look at LrC running a backup catalog and/or a new catalog

 

[robashcroftwales]

You do not need all of these Malware apps active. You should only need and use one malware app. They could be in conflict with each other and preventing Lightroom Classic from accessing the files that it needs.

Interesting. I recently started using McAfee and I thought I had switched off Defender. Seems I didn't so I have been running both. This is interesting as it seems there is some disagreement about running both https://community.mcafee.com/t5/Consumer-General-Discussions/McAfee-and-Windows-Defender/td-p/501988

 

[clee01l]

Interesting. I recently started using McAfee and I thought I had switched off Defender. Seems I didn't so I have been running both. This is interesting as it seems there is some disagreement about running both https://community.mcafee.com/t5/Consumer-General-Discussions/McAfee-and-Windows-Defender/td-p/501988

I look at Malware apps like this: You or an app that you run touches a file. The Malware app sitting between your app and the file has to inspect the file for malware. There is a slight performance hit.
You run two malware apps. Your active app requests a file and malware app#1 wants to inspect the file, so it requests the file and Malware app#2 wants to inspect the file before handing it to Malware app#1. Now since Malware app#2 is just another app in the eyes of Malware app#1, does malware app#1 get called again creating an endless loop? Probably not but you can see the issue. More of an issue is performance hits. If you did not run any malware, then there would be no delay and no performance hit accessing the file by your active app. There is always a performance hit whenever a Malware app is controlling your access to files . Each malware app running on your system concurrently compounds the problem. That's why you don't need but one of these:

• McAfee Total Protection
• MalwareBytes
• Windows Defender

 

[PhilBurton]

Opening another catalog is going to tell you if the issue is with the current master catalog. Starting a new empty catalog and importing a few images into it will tell you if there is a problem with the Lightroom app files or something else.

For a start I'd disable and quit following and restart:

• McAfee Total Protection
• MalwareBytes
• Windows Defender (if you still have that running)

You do not need all of these Malware apps active. You should only need and use one malware app. They could be in conflict with each other and preventing Lightroom Classic from accessing the files that it needs.

If without any malware interfering, your master catalog still causes crashes, then look at LrC running a backup catalog and/or a new catalog

Very slight modification. McAfee Total Protection and Windows Defender will definitely conflict. MalwareBytes is designed to work with other "suite" software, such as Windows Defender. I run the premium version MalwareBytes together with Norton Internet Security (provided for free by my ISP) and have not had any "conflict issues."

 

[africalass]

Hi all!

Thanks so much for taking the time to reply. Sorry for my delay - I've been in zoom meetings back to back.

Opening another catalog is going to tell you if the issue is with the current master catalog. Starting a new empty catalog and importing a few images into it will tell you if there is a problem with the Lightroom app files or something else.

As I'd checked with my secondary catalogue and this is working okay, I thought this wouldn't be necessary to create a new catalogue to experiment with. Is that the case, or would it maybe show something else?

For a start I'd disable and quit following and restart:

• McAfee Total Protection
• MalwareBytes
• Windows Defender (if you still have that running)

You do not need all of these Malware apps active. You should only need and use one malware app. They could be in conflict with each other and preventing Lightroom Classic from accessing the files that it needs.

I have experimented with disabling all antivirus and related software. At first I thought it must be an app issue as I check my catalogues regularly and so this was an important step, but since I had the sudden corrupt catalogue message I have stopped looking at this kind of possibility.

I was advised that MalwareBytes works fine with McAfee, especially as I use it for scans rather than constant monitoring (in the past I found it picked up things that McAfee/Kaspersky didn't). I will have to re-look at Windows Defender though, that is a valid point.

Thanks again to all

 

[PhilBurton]

Hi all!

Thanks so much for taking the time to reply. Sorry for my delay - I've been in zoom meetings back to back.



As I'd checked with my secondary catalogue and this is working okay, I thought this wouldn't be necessary to create a new catalogue to experiment with. Is that the case, or would it maybe show something else?



I have experimented with disabling all antivirus and related software. At first I thought it must be an app issue as I check my catalogues regularly and so this was an important step, but since I had the sudden corrupt catalogue message I have stopped looking at this kind of possibility.

I was advised that MalwareBytes works fine with McAfee, especially as I use it for scans rather than constant monitoring (in the past I found it picked up things that McAfee/Kaspersky didn't). I will have to re-look at Windows Defender though, that is a valid point.

Thanks again to all

MalwareBytes is designed to work with another security suite, unlike "general purpose" suites like Defender or McAfee.

From what I keep reading on various Windows forums, Microsoft has improved Defender to the point that, in combination with MalwareBytes, it provides excellent protection. In other words, no need to pay for McAfee or Norton or another such product.

I should add that the "free" versions of these suites are generally very limited, and don't begin to protect against current threats. The only exception to this statement is Windows Defender, which is built in to Windows 10.

Phil Burton