Some people – so far just Windows users – are finding that the LR5 beta’s crashing at startup. Oooops! It didn’t happen during prerelease testing, but it’s a beta!
It seems to be clashing with some earlier Lightroom preferences, but we haven’t figured out which one yet. The fix is quite simple – temporarily remove existing preference files.
LRuser24 wrote great instructions on the forum. Here’s his instructions:
1. Go to the “Preferences” folder (Win: C:\Users\Name\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Lightroom\Preferences – you can also get to this by opening LR4 and going to Edit menu > Preferences > Presets tab > Show Lightroom Presets Folder button > double click on Preferences folder)
2. Delete “Lightroom 5 Preferences.agprefs” should it be there
3. Rename the “Preferences” folder to “PreferencesXY” or the like
4. Start LR5 – it should now start and create a new LR5 catalog
5. Stop LR5 again
6. Move your old LR1…4 preferences files from “PreferencesXY” folder to the newly created “Preferences” (so that LR1…4 retain their preferences)
7. Delete the “PreferencesXY” folder
8. Start LR5 again. Because it now only reads from its own prefs, it starts OK.
Adobe would love to take a look at all of the preference files that cause LR to crash, so they can find the cause of the crashes and fix them. You can post to the thread linked above, or send them direct to me at members@lightroomqueen.com and I’ll pass them on. If you’re sending me, it would help to know which windows version you’re using too. Thanks!
Update 17 April – Thanks for all the preferences files – Julie Kmoch of Adobe QE has now confirmed that she’s reproduced the bug in house, so they can now get an engineer on the case.
Evelyn says
May 17, 2013 at 5:57 pmHi Victoria,
I have the same problem with LR5. I previously had the trial version for LR4 (and had different problems with that one). So I downloaded and installed the beta version, but can’t open it.
I deleted everything to do with LR4 from the PC, I cannot follow your guidelines above as I only get to Users/Name……. I don’t have the App Data and the rest of it.
Any other suggestions?
I tried to open LR by holding the ctrl key and choosing a new catalog but it still doesn’t open LR.
Evelyn
Victoria Bampton says
May 17, 2013 at 6:34 pmHi Evelyn. Sounds like you’ve got Windows set to hide certain folders – try these instructions https://www.lightroomqueen.com/articles-page/how-do-i-show-hidden-files-to-find-my-preferences-and-presets/ to view App Data and the rest of it.
Alan Haynes says
May 18, 2013 at 5:42 pmThis fix worked perfectly on my Windows 8 laptop. Thanks.
Alan Haynes says
May 18, 2013 at 5:42 pmThis fix worked perfectly on my Windows 8 laptop. Thanks.
Laura Knight says
May 22, 2013 at 11:00 pmThis fix did not work on my imac..please advise
Victoria Bampton says
May 23, 2013 at 6:07 amThat’s because it’s a fix for Windows users.
Are you getting any error messages? How far does it get? And what are your system specs?
Laura Knight says
May 23, 2013 at 7:45 pmVictoria…thank you for your reply. I completely shut down and rebooted my imac and now all seems to be loading as it should. My issue was and that I would launch Lightroom; select the catalog and it would just hang up and not proceed any further. I am running on a iMac version 10.7.5; 2.93GHz intel core i7 with 20Gb of memory. I have been able to initialize and open lightroom 5 several times since I rebooted….I am finding that when it hangs up like this I always have shutdown and reboot…a restart does not always work. I have no issues whatsoever running Lightroom 5 on my macbook pro….
As to you question re error message…no I am not receiving an error message it just hangs up……
Victoria Bampton says
May 25, 2013 at 11:11 amThat sounds like it’s a completely different issue Laura. Odd that it only happens somethings though. If it’s hanging the whole system, I’d be wondering about a hardware error somewhere. Any idea what you’re doing just before it hangs?
VicA says
May 23, 2013 at 10:35 pmSpot on – solved problem on my Win7 64 system. Thanks
Victoria Bampton says
May 25, 2013 at 11:09 amExcellent, glad to hear it Vic
Michael says
May 25, 2013 at 1:50 amDidn’t work.I have windows 8 Sucks so maybe that’s why. Ran your fix, renamed pref, it created a new one still NG.
Victoria Bampton says
May 25, 2013 at 11:09 amHad you run previous Lightroom versions Michael? And you removed the older preferences before opening LR?
Michelle says
May 26, 2013 at 10:44 pmWorked great for wins 8. Took me a few tries but figured it out. works great now!!
Victoria Bampton says
May 27, 2013 at 10:30 amWell done Michelle!
Cyndi25 says
May 29, 2013 at 5:39 pmLightroom 4.4 won’t open. Is that how it’s supposed to work?
Oh dear!
Victoria Bampton says
May 29, 2013 at 6:05 pmNo, that’s not how it’s supposed to work, but it’s probably something really simple. Tell me more?
Steve says
May 31, 2013 at 5:57 pmI had this problem and your solution worked great! Thanks!
Victoria Bampton says
May 31, 2013 at 6:58 pmBrilliant! LRuser24 deserves the credit!
David says
June 7, 2013 at 3:48 pmPerfect. Thank you for sharing.
Anthony Hill says
June 7, 2013 at 6:59 pmWorked a treat … many thanks!