# How do I safely uninstall and reinstall Lightroom 4 on my iMac?



## Trigger (Sep 15, 2013)

I have been having problems with my late 2012 iMac- namely hard drive failures. My first iMac was only 5 months old when it was replaced due to multiple problems with the hard drive. Now my replacement, only 24 hours old, had a disk failure after restoring.
It has been suggested that I uninstall and reinstall every application.
How do I do this safely so that I do not lose all the cataloguing I have done.
Many thanks for any help!


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## clee01l (Sep 15, 2013)

Welcome to the forum.

Drag the LR4 application from the application folder and drop it into the trash.  That is all you need to do to remove the app. 
Then D/L a new copy of LR4.41 from this link
http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=5599
and install.


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## Trigger (Sep 15, 2013)

Thank you for your response Cletus. 

What will happen to my catalogues though? Will it restore when I install a new copy-or does the installation process take me through that? Worried of starting all over again..

Also, while my iMacs are misbehaving, I was hoping to install a copy on my old PC.  I know you can have more than one installation, but does it matter that one is PC and one is Mac?

Sorry for some more questions..


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## clee01l (Sep 15, 2013)

The Catalog and the master copies of your images are stored where you decided when the catalog was created and when you imported the images.  Usually this defaults to a "Lightroom" folder inside the pictures folder. The Application package for LR Usually in not touched after it is installed and is completely separate from the Catalogs and images.  Preferences and the default presets location is in your /Library/ folder and these remain intact so the only thing touched when you uninstall is the application package in the application folder.   The license for LR permits you to install your license on two separate machines for one user.  This can be two Windows or 2 OSX machines or one of each.  There is nothing to prevent you from installing LR on many machines except your conscience.  There are no license police checking up on you.  

Here is a link to describe all of the critical files if you want to transfer everything from one machine to another.   
http://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/kb/preference-file-locations-lighroom-3.html
If you are installing a catalog form OSX onto a Windows machine, keep in mind that the catalog stores a pointer to the master images file location path.  This path includes a Drive letter in windows and OS does not use or need drive letters.  So you may have some difficulty when you open the OSX catalog on Windows for the first time.  The catalog may not know where to look for the images in the Windows environment.  (And vice versa if you move the catalog back).  This can be overcome and prevented if you create a package and move the catalog and master image copies as a complete package. I can help you there if you want to do this.


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