# lightroom quits unexpectedly upon opening



## lefteye (Oct 20, 2008)

I click on LR icon in dock. Icon bounces. First LR window opens and then BOOM - disappears and I get the Mac message that LR has quit unexpectedly. I'm using LR 2.1 on OX1'.5.5.

I've run disk utility - I've removed preferences - I've made a new user (at the suggestion of Adobe un-tech support). New user allows me to open LR. But I don't want a new user (sob sob). 

Please help. I've been running this version with no problem and feeling quite smug about it. Till now.....


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## Andrew Hayton (Oct 20, 2008)

Do you have any backup catalogs you can try and open. It sounds like the current one is corrupt.


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## lefteye (Oct 20, 2008)

I can open LR if I log out and go to a new user I created. All catalogs seem to be fine there.


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## lefteye (Oct 20, 2008)

Also, I can't get to any catalogue from LR on the original user. It just won't open. But as I said, all catalogues are OK if I go in as a new user.


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## Victoria Bampton (Oct 20, 2008)

Hi lefteye, welcome to the forum!

Ok, try this in order:

1.  Delete/move the prefs (you said you'd already done that?).  Make sure you delete 1.x prefs too, as some things are carried over.
2.  Hold down Opt while starting up and start a new catalog somewhere - if it'll let you.

If that doesn't do the trick, I'd personally try going into the other user, hunting down every LR file I can find in the User folders, copying them across to your usual user and using those to replace the files on your normal user.  It sounds daft, but I've heard a number of reports of it doing the trick.


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## lefteye (Oct 20, 2008)

Thanks for your welcome and your help.
I tried the Opt (option) key while starting. It still quits.
I'll try your next suggestion first thing in the morning. I imagine there won't be many LR files in the new user as I just created the new user to test to see if LR would open. But... I'll let you know. Watch this space...


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## Victoria Bampton (Oct 20, 2008)

Yeah, I'd go looking for files in the User/Library/Application Support folder and other backend folders like that.  Copy the prefs file over too, see if that helps.


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## lefteye (Oct 20, 2008)

You're not going to believe this one....
Last night when I couldn't sleep, I remembered that I had turned on Inkwell to experiment with my Wacom tablet. So, I turned it off and BINGO Lightroom opened. I pulled my preferences out of the trash and the only problem is that I had to start from a back up, as I had re-installed LR in an attempt to sort out the problem.
I guess inkwell has some conflict with LR. What do you think about that?


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## Victoria Bampton (Oct 20, 2008)

Nice find!  Yeah, you could be right - it certainly sounds too likely to be a co-incidence.


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## Kiwigeoff (Oct 20, 2008)

You may want to try/test and confirm for sure.


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## lefteye (Oct 21, 2008)

Got lightroom back, BUT...
I can't get into my catalogue. I guess this is because I re-installed LR. I've directed it to the catalogue back up that I want, but it opens another one instead. 

Any suggestions?


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## lefteye (Oct 21, 2008)

I forgot to mention. The catalogue that I want is there - but it is ghosted. That is why I tried a back up. Yes, it opened, but it's not the catalogue that I want.


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## Victoria Bampton (Oct 21, 2008)

Look at the catalog file in Explorer/Finder - check it's got a *.lrcat extension, and that you have read/write permissions.  You could also try moving it to another location and then double clicking to open it.


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## brentwilson (Nov 17, 2008)

I am having a similar problem to what was first posted in this thread. Lightroom 2.1 was working fine a few days ago. But now when I click on it to open it, the icon bounces for a while and then the mac message comes up saying "The application Adobe Lightroom 2 quit unexpectedly." What causes this to suddenly happen? I tried deleting the preference file, but it still had the problem. I tried deleting Lightroom and re-downloading it and installing it, and it still has the problem.


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## lefteye (Nov 17, 2008)

I had that problem twice in a short period of time. The first time I discovered it was because I had enabled ink (in system preferences). I dumped INK and was able to get LR working again. The second time I had the problem I had installed a Western Digital External Hard drive (not the one made for Mac) and it had installed some miscellaneous software. I removed the software and still had the problem, but I found more miscellaneous files that it was using by checking what was running in Activity Monitor - I then clicked on"open files and ports" to find the path to where the things were residing. I dumped them in the trash and TA DA. Lightroom worked again. It seems to be sensitive in some way to other software. It was a miracle that I figured this out as I'm pretty dull at the deeper workings of computers. At any rate, think back to see if you've changed or installed any software. Good luck - horrible problem, eh?


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## Victoria Bampton (Nov 17, 2008)

Brent, you could also try holding down Opt while starting, and let it try starting another fresh catalog, to rule out the catalog as the problem.  There are a few different possibilities, so it's just a case of narrowing it down.


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## brentwilson (Nov 17, 2008)

Thanks for the quick responses. Holding down the option key does not help, it still quits unexpectedly. I did log in as a guest user and Lightroom opened okay. But that doesn't really solve my problem.  :(


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## brentwilson (Nov 17, 2008)

I also tried moving my lightroom catalogue to a different location on my computer and clicking it to open Lightroom, but same bad results.

As far as getting rid of stuff that shows up in Activity Monitor, I don't really know what I am doing there if it is a process that I don't recognize the name of. Scary stuff!

Also, Lightroom was working okay for me on Friday night. It did seem a bit sluggish, but I was also working with other programs which could have caused that. Since then, don't think I have really installed any new programs (other than trying to reinstall Lightroom today). So I don't know...


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## Victoria Bampton (Nov 17, 2008)

Ok, that's interesting.  Dodgy user accounts have been known to cause trouble, but there's a few other things you could try.  First I'd try zipping up the whole user/library/application support/adobe/lightroom folder, and replacing it with the one from the clean user.  It may be something like a corrupt preset.  If that doesn't do the trick, I'd go looking for any other LR files in the user/library folder, and copy them over from the clean user account too.  It could be that one of the files has become corrupted.


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## brentwilson (Nov 17, 2008)

I tried moving the old lightroom folder that you mentioned above to the desktop and copied in the lightroom folder from the guest user. But still no go. I am thinking that it is probably something wrong with my catalog. How could I test for that?


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## Victoria Bampton (Nov 17, 2008)

Holding down Opt would let you check your catalog - simply by bringing up the dialog to start a new one.  Or you could try opening that catalog with the other user account.


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## brentwilson (Nov 17, 2008)

Okay, I just put my Lightroom catalog onto my usb jump drive and then logged in as a guest user on my computer and Lightroom opened it fine. So now I don't think it is my catalog. Would it work to just delete everything associated with Lightroom on my computer, then reinstall it, copy my lightroom catalog back onto my computer, and then open it? Or would that not make any difference?

Holding down Option when I try to start Lightroom doesn't seem to make any difference. It quits unexpectedly before it even asks me what catalog to open.


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## Victoria Bampton (Nov 17, 2008)

Yep, that's got to be worth a good shot Brent.


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## brentwilson (Nov 17, 2008)

Okay, I tried removing all the Lightroom 2 files from my computer and reinstalling Lightroom, but it still doesn't work. I also tried deleting some podcasts from iTunes that I just recently subscribed to that were dealing with Lightroom. I was thinking that it might be possible that the word "Lightroom" in their titles or whatever might have messed things up. But it still doesn't work. This is getting really frustrating. Any suggestions? Also, I am using a 3' day trial of Lightroom. Does that make any difference? I think it is still the full version, just without a purchased serial number entered.


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## Victoria Bampton (Nov 18, 2008)

The trial is still the full version, so that shouldn't be it.

I've seen other programs 'stop working' due to corrupted user accounts in the past, so that still gets my vote.  

Could you have missed some hidden files when you deleted things?  When you reinstalled, did you reinstall or did you copy files over from the clean user account?  Last time I heard of anyone having this kind of trouble, allowing the clean user to create new preferences file etc was enough to do the trick.


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