# Lightroom CC - Crashes when import selected



## nwsmart (Jul 2, 2016)

Hi,

Not sure if this is a LR problem or an installation issue but when I select import LR goes to look at the discs on my iMac but then freezes with a spinning ball :(

When auto import happens (when a memory card inserted in the machine) the import functions fine

Any thoughts or suggestions please as this is very frustrating

Jim


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## Jim Wilde (Jul 2, 2016)

My first thought would be that there's a problem with one of those disks....if there's a memory card inserted, LR will default to selecting just that. Try disconnecting the drives one by one until LR doesn't freeze, to see if you can pinpoint a drive that LR balks over.


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## PeterGG (Jul 2, 2016)

I have had the same problem since updating to CC 2015.6 [ 1078672 ]. I have no problems with earlier versions. Tried many things including a long on-line session with Lightroom tech support where they remotely controlled my Mac. It seems that there is a memory leak when going to Import. To see this, launch Mac > Activity Monitor > Memory. When Lightroom tries to launch Import and there's a spinning beach ball, watch Lightroom's memory in Activity Monitor as it climbs into many gigabytes. I've had Lightroom try to consume over 26GB of memory! Once the memory starts climbing, doing a Force Quit is the only escape.
This morning, Lightroom Import finally worked after three failed attempts with no change in the computer's configuration.
Things that I've experimented with no luck include: 
Window size. Some said the new Lightroom doesn't like full screen windows.
Graphic processor (GPU). Turning on/off in System Preferences
Lightroom Plug-ins. Disabled all
Uninstalling & reinstalling Lightroom. Reverted back. Works fine with earlier versions.
Deleting Lightroom's .plist files in the Library. Lightroom creates a new one. You'll have to reselect some preferences.
Quitting all other apps
Different or no camera cards.
I'm not sure the Adobe knows that there's a major problem.


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## nwsmart (Jul 2, 2016)

PeterGG said:


> I have had the same problem since updating to CC 2015.6 [ 1078672 ]. I have no problems with earlier versions. Tried many things including a long on-line session with Lightroom tech support where they remotely controlled my Mac. It seems that there is a memory leak when going to Import. To see this, launch Mac > Activity Monitor > Memory. When Lightroom tries to launch Import and there's a spinning beach ball, watch Lightroom's memory in Activity Monitor as it climbs into many gigabytes. I've had Lightroom try to consume over 26GB of memory! Once the memory starts climbing, doing a Force Quit is the only escape.
> This morning, Lightroom Import finally worked after three failed attempts with no change in the computer's configuration.
> Things that I've experimented with no luck include:
> Window size. Some said the new Lightroom doesn't like full screen windows.
> ...




Peter thanks for that - I will have to do some more work on it and will watch the activity monitor closely.  How difficult is it to wind back LR CC to an earlier version?

Thanks for the post - appreciated


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## nwsmart (Jul 2, 2016)

Jim Wilde said:


> My first thought would be that there's a problem with one of those disks....if there's a memory card inserted, LR will default to selecting just that. Try disconnecting the drives one by one until LR doesn't freeze, to see if you can pinpoint a drive that LR balks over.




Jim - thanks for that - will take a look at that in conjunction with some ideas PeterGG has posted


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## PeterGG (Jul 2, 2016)

I have also tried it with the Creative Cloud app off. No luck.
An easy way to roll back is via the Creative Cloud app. However, this may not roll back to the most recent previous version. It may roll back to several versions back. The versions you may want may be available on the Adobe web site.

My theories on the cause of this problem changes with the phase of the moon. Apparently, Adobe has deactivated the full screen mode with this version. If you hover the mouse cursor over the green dot at the top left of the Lightroom window, you will see a plus sign, not the two expansion arrows that's in most other Mac apps. This makes me think that Adobe knows there's a graphics problem. My latest plan of attack is to make the Lightroom window smaller before quitting Lightroom. Have no edge of the Lightroom window touch the screen's edge or top menu. Then quit. Lightroom launch time also seems a bit shorter. Perhaps, by the next full moon, I'll have a different theory.


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## DanP (Jul 12, 2016)

I've had the same issue since the latest upgrade as well, and it's driving me a little crazy. The import works once or twice, but then I get the beachball and need to Force Quit the app. When it stalls like that, it seems to be looking for devices because it's only listed a few import locations on the left hand side. I get the same issue even if I haven't inserted a card in my card reader, so I know it's not the card itself.


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## silsurf (Jul 13, 2016)

Same problem here, ever since installing Build 1078672 it hangs on import only about 50% of the time. If I close all other programs I have better luck. I have also received "out of memory" system warnings while this issue occurs.


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## Marc Rochkind (Jul 14, 2016)

I had a freeze when exporting, and after trying numerous things, decided to create a fresh user account and ran Lightroom from there. Worked perfectly. I never did figure out what it was (deleting plists wasn't enough), so just switched to that new user.

This is an easy experiment for you to run, much easier than horsing around with plists, caches, etc.


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## pszilard (Jul 17, 2016)

PeterGG said:


> I have had the same problem since updating to CC 2015.6 [ 1078672 ]. I have no problems with earlier versions. Tried many things including a long on-line session with Lightroom tech support where they remotely controlled my Mac. It seems that there is a memory leak when going to Import. To see this, launch Mac > Activity Monitor > Memory. When Lightroom tries to launch Import and there's a spinning beach ball, watch Lightroom's memory in Activity Monitor as it climbs into many gigabytes. I've had Lightroom try to consume over 26GB of memory! Once the memory starts climbing, doing a Force Quit is the only escape.
> This morning, Lightroom Import finally worked after three failed attempts with no change in the computer's configuration.
> Things that I've experimented with no luck include:
> Window size. Some said the new Lightroom doesn't like full screen windows.
> ...



*SAME PROBLEM!*

I am running on an iMac 27" i7 with current El Capitan, 32GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD (internal).
My LR 6.6 is full license not CC. LR6 just blows up memory! I was using Activity Monitor seeing LR memory consumption exceed 32GB and only way out is the Force Quit. Cannot import anything!
I have ran Disk Utility and the drive is healthy, I've quit every resident app, but makes no difference.
*This has got to be a Severity 1 problem! I cannot do any of my photographic work with new images!*

If anyone finds a solution please post!!!


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## PeterGG (Jul 17, 2016)

Paul
Thanks for your report. Today, I was about to experiment on my iMac. You saved me the trouble. My MacBook Pro and iMac have different hardware, including graphics cards, which Adobe has implied is the culprit. (I have had some luck by making the Lightroom window smaller before quitting.)
Via the Creative Cloud app, I just uninstalled, then downloaded/installed LR 2015.6-Mac app with the option to remove old preferences. Selecting "Import" immediately froze LR. Force Quit & Relaunched. Froze. Unplugged network & WiFi off. Import worked. Quit & relaunched. Import Froze. Bottom line: I've tried many configurations and have found none that fixes the Import - Freeze problem. Relaunching with no configuration change sometimes works. I think many of us are confused, angry and irritated that Adobe is silent. Force Quit > Crash Report available on request.
Cheers Peter


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## clee01l (Jul 17, 2016)

I've not experienced this problem. However, there are reported instances when LR breaks into a memory leak and hangs.  My recommendation is to roll back to LRCC2015.5.1/LR6.5.1
How do I roll back to an earlier Lightroom release?

Doing this seems to have cured any LR squirrelly behavior.  

I would only upgrade to the dot 6 release if any of the added features are essential


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## PeterGG (Jul 17, 2016)

clee01l said:


> I've not experienced this problem. However, there are reported instances when LR breaks into a memory leak and hangs.  My recommendation is to roll back to LRCC2015.5.1/LR6.5.1
> How do I roll back to an earlier Lightroom release?
> 
> Doing this seems to have cured any LR squirrelly behavior.
> ...


Agree. I did temporarily roll back and it works.
Do ya think Adobe will then give me a discount on my CC subscription? I think not. 
Would be nice if Adobe was a bit more responsive than my goldfish.
Peter


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## PeterGG (Jul 18, 2016)

Been experimenting. Did two things that may have helped. I have had no recent crashes.
Since doing the above, I have not had a single freeze. Perhaps others with the freeze problem could try these, see if it helps and let us know. Disclaimer: The below is above my "paygrade", but nobody else seems to have a fix.

1. In Users > MyUserName > Library > Preferences:  In the Preferences folder, I changed permissions to so that everyone has read/write privileges. Then applied those to all enclosed items. (To open the Library, go to Finder > Option-"Go" > Library > Preferences.)

2. Before launching Lightroom, went to "Activity Monitor" > CPU > Sortup. Then find and quit "dynamiclinkmanager" if it's open. To quit, click the "dynamiclinkmanager" name, then click the "X" icon at the window top left. It looks like this should automatically launch and quit; but I'm not sure it always acts normally. Example: In Activity Monitor, I've seen four or more copies of dynamiclinkmanager open at the same time. Also, I'm not sure it's needed for Lightroom > Import. I've quit dynamiclinkmanager just before LR > Import and Import still worked OK.

***********
Update Jul 18, 2016: I have had much better luck by quitting "dynamiclinkmanager" just before clicking Lightroom > Import for the *FIRST* time and not before launching Lightroom as mentioned above. You do not have to quit "dynamiclinkmanager" again unless you relaunch Lightroom.
Trivia: When launching Lightroom, I've seen up to six copies of "dynamiclinkmanager" temporarily listed in Activity Monitor. I think Lightroom > Import doesn't "like" this copy. Thus, quit that process. Lightroom will automatically open a new "dynamiclinkmanager" when you click Import.
***********

(There's also a "dynamiclinkmediasever", which also should automatically launch/quit. I don't think this is a problem process.)

Trivia: I tried to downgrade LR which apparently does not have this freeze problem. But, I couldn't revert my LR Catalog to be compatible with the older version. Perhaps, there's a "trick" to do this.

Peter


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## clee01l (Jul 18, 2016)

PeterGG said:


> Trivia: I tried to downgrade LR which apparently does not have this freeze problem. But, I couldn't revert my LR Catalog to be compatible with the older version. Perhaps, there's a "trick" to do this.


LRCC2015.5.1 and LRCC2015.6 use the same LR6 catalog structure.  You can not downgrade to a LR5 equivalent version because the catalog structure changes between LR5 and LR6  If you are running LRCC2015.6, you can uninstall it following the link that I gave earlier (How do I roll back to an earlier Lightroom release?) and then install LRCC2015.5.1 and open your current catalog.


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## PeterGG (Jul 18, 2016)

clee01l said:


> LRCC2015.5.1 and LRCC2015.6 use the same LR6 catalog structure.  You can not downgrade to a LR5 equivalent version because the catalog structure changes between LR5 and LR6  If you are running LRCC2015.6, you can uninstall it following the link that I gave earlier (How do I roll back to an earlier Lightroom release?) and then install LRCC2015.5.1 and open your current catalog.


Cletus
I did follow your link. The downloaded installer which immediately gave me an error message after it launched and it couldn't continue. Tried downloading & running twice.
I then used Creative Cloud to uninstall LRCC2015.6, then still using CC reverted to the most recent available earlier Lightroom. This version may have been older than what's available if downloaded via your way. It is that version that couldn't use my 2015.6 Catalog. I then Googled for ideas and found suggestions to both try to fix permissions and twiddle with "dynamiclinkmanager". Frankly, I don't know which, permissions or dynamiclinkmanager, twiddling has helped. Perhaps, neither and the problem will return. Granting read/write permissions is usually harmless, especially since I'm the only user. The "dynamiclinkmanager" stuff is sort a poke in the dark. By watching "Activity Monitor", it does not always behave the same way. Sometimes, it launches & quits automatically. Other times, it hesitates. Sometimes, it shows more than one open "dynamiclinkmanager". For now, I'm relieved that LRCC2015.6 seems to be behaving; but I'd love to find a permanent fix.
Cheers, Peter


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## clee01l (Jul 18, 2016)

The only version available  through the CC App manager are the latest whole number versions  i.e LRCC2015.6 or LRCC5.7.1  You need to follow ALL of the instructions given be Victoria on her post. Uninstall LRCC2015.6.  Install the LRCC2015.0 from the link provided not from the CC App manager.  Then install the update to LRCC2015.5.1  from the link near the bottom of the Adobe  page.

As for me, I am going to wait for LRCC2015.7 or what ever version follows LRCC2015.6. and stay on LRCC2015.5.1 in the mean time


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## PeterGG (Jul 18, 2016)

clee01l said:


> The only version available  through the CC App manager are the latest whole number versions  i.e LRCC2015.6 or LRCC5.7.1  You need to follow ALL of the instructions given be Victoria on her post. Uninstall LRCC2015.6.  Install the LRCC2015.0 from the link provided not from the CC App manager.  Then install the update to LRCC2015.5.1  from the link near the bottom of the Adobe  page.
> 
> As for me, I am going to wait for LRCC2015.7 or what ever version follows LRCC2015.6. and stay on LRCC2015.5.1 in the mean time


Thanks for clarifying the differences between reverting back your way or via CC.
For now, I'm going to see if my solution above will work. If not, I'll follow your instructions and go back to LRCC2015.5.1. Fortunately, I had some free time to experiment. If freezes return, I'll follow your guidance to revert back to LRCC2015.5.1 and, like you, wait for the next official update. Thanks again for your help. Peter


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## PeterGG (Jul 27, 2016)

I followed Cletus's advice and downgraded to an earlier version of LR. I wonder if that triggered Adobe to release version CC 2015.6.1 [ 1083169 ].    This new version claims to have fixed some, hopefully all, of the things that we've been complaining about. It would have been nice if Adobe had previously stated they were aware of our issues and were working on fixes. Anyway, this new release is working well. 
   On to wishing for other LR things. Although minor, I'd like a way to cancel the backup-yes/no dialog so that I could continue working in LR. Just add a "Cancel" button to return to a working LR. Seems like an common and easy addition.


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## Victoria Bampton (Jul 27, 2016)

There was an import bug confirmed on the bug report forum, so that's probably the same one you were seeing. Glad to hear the update's working well!


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## PeterGG (Jul 27, 2016)

Victoria
Yes. But, they called the bug "occasional". It was chronic and frequent.
Thanks for the clear rollback instructions. Hope I don't need them again.
Peter


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## clee01l (Jul 27, 2016)

Victoria Bampton said:


> There was an import bug confirmed on the bug report forum, so that's probably the same one you were seeing. Glad to hear the update's working well!


I let Adobe CC app manager install the latest LR update CC2015.6.1.  So  far, it seems to have fixed all of the egregious faults that I found with LRCC2015.6


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