Using catalog created with Lightroom 2.4 with Lightroom 2.4 64 bit

[rlautzen]

I recently purchased a new PC (Windows Vista Home Premium sp1, AMD 965' quad-core 2.3 GHz processor) and installed Lightroom 2.4 64 bit. I want to utilize my catalog that I created on my older PC (XP Home edition version 2''2, SP3) which runs Lightroom 2.4 (32 bit version). When I try to open my catalog, I get the following error message: "Lightroom cannot open the catalog named "Default Lightroom Catalog_1" because it is not writable and cannot be opened"

Is there a workaround for this issue?

 

[breyman]

Hi rlautzen, welcome to the forums.

I recently upgraded my catalog from Vista 32-bit to 64-bit and didn't run into that problem.

Do you happen to have a recent backup of your catalog that you can try and open (in the event that your current catalog is corrupted)? It sounds like the file might be locked. Did it close properly when you last exited in 32-bit?

Also, how did you open the catalog in 64-bit? Did you double-click on the catalog file or open it using File > Open Catalog in LR? I would recommend trying it a few different ways. If needed, perhaps try creating a new catalog and import the problematic catalog into it (File > Import from Catalog).

 

[Kiwigeoff]

In the folder where your catalog is, with LR closed, check if there is a .lock file, if so remove it and retry double clicking the .lrcat file.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

"Because it's not writable" sounds like a file or folder permission issue, particularly on Vista. It might not be the folder directly, but a parent folder that you don't have permission to use.

 

[rlautzen]

Thanks everyone for the advice. I ended up "importing from catalog" to create a new catalog under LR 64.

 

[Denis Pagé]

I am with Victoria on this. There are many chances that you will get similar problems with other files and other programs too...

 

[patrad]

I had this same issues with my catalogs. I went from 32-bit 2.2 to 64-bit 2.4

I had multiple catalogs on removable drives and some on SATA drives I put in the new machine.

Sometimes it gave me the writeable error, other times Lightroom just would not (re)start given the new catalog file.

Indeed it was a Windows 7 permissions issue, I had to right-click on the Catalog folder and give full control to the "Users" group.

 

[breyman]

I saw a similar problem in a different situation recently. For some reason, it was seeing some/all of the files as read-only. I had to right-click on the top-level folder above the catalog/images and make sure that read-only was turned all the way off. Because it was Vista, I also had to disable UAC to ensure it worked properly.