SOLVED Lightroom Library folders missing after certain date

[Ian]

Have a look at the above. The Library filter shows an imported image that was taken on 6th October 2011. But the folder list on the left ends on 9th September 2008. All the folders in the library folder list view that were previously listed later than 2008-09-09 have disappeared. The actual folders are still there, along with their contents and they remain in the Lightroom catalogue database. It's just that the folders are not listed in the library any more. Importing new images makes no difference to the folder list. I have tried re-synchronising the folders - still no solution...

Any ideas folks?

Ian

[Geoff]

Re: Lightroom Library folders missing after certain date

Ian, could it be that the padlock (top right next to custom filter) is locked? Try clicking on it to open the lock and disable the filter.

Geoff.

[Ian]

Re: Lightroom Library folders missing after certain date

Ian, could it be that the padlock (top right next to custom filter) is locked? Try clicking on it to open the lock and disable the filter.

Geoff.

No, I don't think so. This only applies to selection filters and I wasn't using any.

It looks like I may have to recreate the entire catalogue by exporting it to a new one. Seeing as the catalogue and its contents is about 1.5TB, this could be a challenging task!

Ian

[Geoff]

Re: Lightroom Library folders missing after certain date

Have you somehow opened an old version of your catalog?

Geoff.

[Ian]

Re: Lightroom Library folders missing after certain date

Have you somehow opened an old version of your catalog?

Geoff.

I see where you are coming from, but no

Somewhere the catalogue has become corrupted. I have seen other instances on the Web where people have experienced the same thing. I can see all the images in my catalogue by filtering in the library or using keywords. But the database seems to have become disconnected from folder names beyond a certain date name.

The recommended solution is to export the images (including previews only and not including the original images (or 'negatives') in your catalogue as a new catalogue. The process hopefully repairs the folder connections.

As I won't have moved the original images and folders, the new catalogue should reference the originals for editing in the Develop module without problems - fingers crossed!

I'm doing that now, but my catalogue has 135,000 images and the process probably won't finish before I go home this evening - after it was started this morning!

I'll keep you posted!

Ian

[Geoff]

Re: Lightroom Library folders missing after certain date

Good luck with that! Computers can be time consuming when things go wrong. I managed to get a virus on my main computer last night (Trojan.Fakealert). I thought my antivirus software had stopped it but it was there this morning with lots of error messages trying to get me to buy a removal tool. I've got rid of it but it has taken several wasted hours and important work not done. Good to have my laptop as back-up for web and emails at times like this. Fortunately it hasn't happened very often.

Geoff.

[Ian]

Re: Lightroom Library folders missing after certain date

Good luck with that! Computers can be time consuming when things go wrong. I managed to get a virus on my main computer last night (Trojan.Fakealert). I thought my antivirus software had stopped it but it was there this morning with lots of error messages trying to get me to buy a removal tool. I've got rid of it but it has taken several wasted hours and important work not done. Good to have my laptop as back-up for web and emails at times like this. Fortunately it hasn't happened very often.

Geoff.

What antivirus software do you use?

Ian

[Geoff]

Re: Lightroom Library folders missing after certain date

I'm using BullGuard. I've been using it for several years on my 2 computers and my 2 daughters laptops and this is the first time a virus or trojan has got through. Last night BullGuard stopped the trojan from replicating and accessing the internet but didn't eliminate it fully so today it was panic stations! I manged to start in safe mode, run a quick scan with BullGuard which fixed it. Then I did a system restore to 2 days ago, then I did a scan with Malwarebytes which took 3 hours and found 1 infected file which wasn't related to today's virus.

I've seen this virus on other peoples computers and it can make the computer unusable. A friend got it last week and my nephew had it (and others), in both cases the hard drive had to be formatted and everything re-installed.

How is you Lightroom catalog coming on?

Geoff.

[Ian]

Re: Lightroom Library folders missing after certain date

I couldn't stay late at the office tonight, so I left the catalogue rebuild running (desktop PC, not a laptop). Hopefully it will have finished by the time I get to the office tomorrow morning

Ian

[Ian]

Re: Lightroom Library folders missing after certain date

Sadly, the catalogue rebuild has not solved the problem. I can find any image I wish through the filters, but no folders are listed later than 2008-11-09 - (a tiny improvement on before but not much!).

I'll have to find out if Adobe have any advice. Will keep you posted.

Ian

[OlyPaul]

Re: Lightroom Library folders missing after certain date

Ian does not restoring the backup catalogue (you should have backed up on a regular basis) before the folders disappeared not solve the problem?

[Ian]

Re: Lightroom Library folders missing after certain date

I do have several LR backups, but I have been doing a lot of file consolidation work in the last few days and I don't really want to lose that work.

Ian

[Ian]

Re: Lightroom Library folders missing after certain date

Well, the problem has gone away although I can't honestly say that I know exactly how or why.

I upgraded the PC from Windows XP to Windows 7 Pro (clean install), as I had planned to do, and when reinstalling Lightroom I could not open the catalogue because of the security settings for all the files on that drive (which had remained unchanged during the OS upgrade). I had to apply new user/security configurations to all the files on that drive and this solved the problem of being able to open the catallogue and on top of that I was pleasantly surprised to see that the folder list was back to normal, with none missing that I could see.

So maybe it was a file user permissions issue that had upset things originally. I really don't know, but I'm certainly very pleased!

Ian

[Geoff]

Re: Lightroom Library folders missing after certain date

This is very similar to a problem that I noticed today when I was using my accounting software which has a backup button that I click on every few minutes. This backs up to my second internal drive (E:/) but today I got a error message that the folder could not be found. I looked on my E drive and assumed I had accidently deleted it and started to create a folder with the same name but was told that a folder existed with that name. I then found out that some folders on that drive had been changed to Hidden, also the option to view hidden folders had been turned off, as well as the option to "Hide extensions for know file types" being changed.

I am assuming that these changes were caused by the virus or trojan I had this week before I managed to get rid of it! Ian, is it possible that you have had a virus that could have changed the folder permissions therefore leading to Lightroom not being able to see the folders?

(I've done my 2010/11 accounts, now for my online tax return Better late than never!)

Geoff.

[Ian]

Re: Lightroom Library folders missing after certain date

This is very similar to a problem that I noticed today when I was using my accounting software which has a backup button that I click on every few minutes. This backs up to my second internal drive (E:/) but today I got a error message that the folder could not be found. I looked on my E drive and assumed I had accidently deleted it and started to create a folder with the same name but was told that a folder existed with that name. I then found out that some folders on that drive had been changed to Hidden, also the option to view hidden folders had been turned off, as well as the option to "Hide extensions for know file types" being changed.

I am assuming that these changes were caused by the virus or trojan I had this week before I managed to get rid of it! Ian, is it possible that you have had a virus that could have changed the folder permissions therefore leading to Lightroom not being able to see the folders?

(I've done my 2010/11 accounts, now for my online tax return Better late than never!)

Geoff.

I don't think this was my problem. I had been moving large numbers of files around from old drives, so some file permissions may have thrown a spanner in the works. But I will run a scan on that drive overnight and let you know if anything turns up.

Ian