Lr Crashed and Will Not Restart

[Remo Nonaz]

I had Lr and PS working tonight and suddenly they crashed - pretty badly, ctl+alt+del would not bring up the control panel and I had no mouse pointer. I had to shut down. When I restarted and tried to launch Lr I got the message in the attachment. Now, whenever I try to open Lr I get this message and I cannot get beyond it. Any ideas?

[Paul Williamson]

I bet you could solve that problem by deleting the preview cache.

You'll find it next to your catalog file. Its filename ends with "Previews.lrdata".

[Tony Jay]

I bet you could solve that problem by deleting the preview cache.

You'll find it next to your catalog file. Its filename ends with "Previews.lrdata".

Also check whether the .lrcat.lock file is there or not and delete it if it is.

Tony Jay

[Remo Nonaz]

I'm not sure what exactly I am supposed to be deleting. I searched the C drive "previews.lrdata"and came up with the attached list. It goes on for pages but is sorted by date, so the last ones are on this screen.

I also found the catalog in users>name>my pictures>lightroom. There is a folder, .lrdata. Should I delete the whole folder? I have attached a screen shot of this as well.

What should I be deleting to solve the problem?

[john beardsworth]

As Paul said, you should delete the previews.lrdata folder which sits in the same folder as your catalogue (the lrcat file).

It's a shame the error message doesn't put it as simply!

[Simon Garrett]

Deleting the previews folder isn't as drastic as it sounds.  When Lightroom wants to display an image in Library module, it looks for a preview in the previews folder.  If there isn't an up-to-date preview there, it creates one.  The only penalty of deleting the preview folder is that each images take a bit longer to render the next time you look at it. 

[Remo Nonaz]

I deleted the folder and it did the trick. Thank you.

That folder was 16GB. Even with a 240GB SSD C drive, that's a lot of space. Is there a good way to trim the size of this folder by changing the preview sizes or perhaps the amount of time before deleting peview images?

[john beardsworth]

You can trim it by selecting images in LR and using the Library's Library > Previews > Discard.... menus. You could delete the previews for images that you're not routinely accessing.

There are also options in Catalog Settings.

[Simon Garrett]

As John says, you can control the resolution of previews (I use 2048 pixels, medium quality) and how long 1:1 previews are kept (I use 30 days) in Catalog settings -> File handling.  On my SSD drive C, there are currently just over 12G of previews.

[Remo Nonaz]

Good input, people. I will change my settings and tune this up.

I've also found some Lr files that are not in the Adobe folder or the User folders. They appear to not have been accessed in years. I assume I can delete these as well.