Sharing LR2 catalog-laptop/desktop

[danl4481]

I've been using a USB drive to store my Lightroom 2 files and catalog, and now I want to use those photos and catalog with LR2 on my new laptop. The desktop runs Windows XP and the laptop runs Vista Home Premium. I'm new to Vista and I think that's the root of my problem:

When I try to open the catalog on the portable drive plugged into the laptop I get the message "you don't have permission to open this file. Contact file owner or administrator for permission". I have administrator rights of course. So I tried to change ownership of the LR2 Catalog to my administrative persona, but it won't allow me to do that either.

How do I get access to my LR2 catalog from my laptop? I know this is probably a Vista question rather than Lightroom specific, but can anyone help me here?

Dan Lindstrom

 

[Denis Pagé]

Welcome to the forums Dan!
Plug back to the XP computer. Assing rights from there to "everyone".
Plug back to Vista and tell us if I was right.

 

[danl4481]

Denis,
I found the problem--I had copied the catalog to the portable drive while it was still open (the .lck file was still there!). No wonder the protection was screwed up! Everything is working now on both computers.

 

[Denis Pagé]

Ah! Yes! that .lock file is created each time a Lightroom Catalog is open and disappear at close. But normally Lightroom do not say "you don't have permission to open this file" but something like "Catalog is in use by another program". This is why this didn't came to my mind...

Nice that you are sorted and come back as needed.