Unable to view my images in Light Room since Restoring my back to factory settings.

[Autumn]

For the fourth time, I have had to restore my new computer (last December) back to factory settings.

I have backed up my Lightroom images on a regular basis, mostly to the C drive, which seemed to happen by default, but also to my external hard drive, which was the last back up I did before restoring the computer.

I have reinstalled Light Room and tried to load my images, but all I get is a question mark and the folders in red. I can see the images, but there is a message saying that the file is missing.

I have right clicked and tried to locate the images, to no avail.

I have also tried to open the backed up files by relaunching Lightroom all to no avail.

Have you any ideas how I can get my adjusted Lightroom files back into lightroom.

I know I have the images elsewhere, but the ones in Lightroom have all had lots of adjustment done.

I feel that this is the downside of Lightroom. Had I adjusted them in CS2 or CS3, I would have saved each image as ***adjusted.

Once again I am hoping someone can throw some light onto my problem.

[rogleale]

Re: Unable to view my images in Light Room since Restoring my back to factory settings.

You don't say that you have re-imported them Audrey, but I think that you will find that is what you have to do. You should be able to import them by folders, not individually though.

Roger

[Ian]

Re: Unable to view my images in Light Room since Restoring my back to factory settings.

For the fourth time, I have had to restore my new computer (last December) back to factory settings.

I have backed up my Lightroom images on a regular basis, mostly to the C drive, which seemed to happen by default, but also to my external hard drive, which was the last back up I did before restoring the computer.

I have reinstalled Light Room and tried to load my images, but all I get is a question mark and the folders in red. I can see the images, but there is a message saying that the file is missing.

I have right clicked and tried to locate the images, to no avail.

I have also tried to open the backed up files by relaunching Lightroom all to no avail.

Have you any ideas how I can get my adjusted Lightroom files back into lightroom.

I know I have the images elsewhere, but the ones in Lightroom have all had lots of adjustment done.

I feel that this is the downside of Lightroom. Had I adjusted them in CS2 or CS3, I would have saved each image as ***adjusted.

Once again I am hoping someone can throw some light onto my problem.

Lightroom stores its knowledge of the places where the images it knows about are stored in, plus the edits you have previously made and file metadata, etc. in a database or catalogue file, for example: filename.lrcat.

In theory, if you restore the image files and catalogue preview folders (a cache of pre-rendered views of your images) and the catalogue to where they were originally, when you open that catalogue everything should work.

Are you sure that these files were restored to their exact same place in the file structure of your hard drive? No folders have different names resulting from the re-initialisation of your PC?

Ian

[Autumn]

Re: Unable to view my images in Light Room since Restoring my back to factory settings.

I don't think I really know how to restore them.

What is the correct procedure please?

[rogleale]

Re: Unable to view my images in Light Room since Restoring my back to factory settings.

Your images are obviously safe Audrey, but all the information and adjustments are kept seperately from the actual images in order that the originals are never touched.
The files you need to find, if the re-install has not deleted them, are in C\Users\"Your Name"\Pictures\Lightroom\ - in that folder should be two other folders entitled 'Lightroom Catalogues Previews' and 'Lightroom Catalogue'. The LR Catalogue, an lrcat file, is the one you need to find because it is where all the adjustments are recorded.
You may find that you also have a folder called 'Silvertone' - look in there too.

I hope that helps,

Roger

[Autumn]

Re: Unable to view my images in Light Room since Restoring my back to factory settings.

Lightroom stores its knowledge of the places where the images it knows about are stored in, plus the edits you have previously made and file metadata, etc. in a database or catalogue file, for example: filename.lrcat.

In theory, if you restore the image files and catalogue preview folders (a cache of pre-rendered views of your images) and the catalogue to where they were originally, when you open that catalogue everything should work.

Are you sure that these files were restored to their exact same place in the file structure of your hard drive? No folders have different names resulting from the re-initialisation of your PC?

Ian

I have noticed that when I right click to locate missing folder it says:

"Original Location "I:"\My Pictures\Abstract (or whatever file is named)" but since I have restored my PC, my external hard drive is "D:" not "I:". Could this be the reason? If it is, what do I need to do.

[rogleale]

Re: Unable to view my images in Light Room since Restoring my back to factory settings.

You could go into diskmgmt and rename your external HD 'I' again Audrey which should make your pictures accessible using the old navigation, but if restoring your machine deleted the lrcat folder from the address in my previous post all your adjustments are lost. If however you can find the lrcat folder, maybe in a backup somewhere, you could import that as a catalogue to LR.
Roger

[Autumn]

Re: Unable to view my images in Light Room since Restoring my back to factory settings.

Hello again. I still have not been able to restore my images. I am not sure where to input "diskmgmt" in order to change the external hard drive.

Today is my birthday and it would be a good pressie if I could restore these files.

I am posting some screengrabs to see if they can help to indicate the process I need to employ to restore my 22,000+ photographs.

As you can see the External Hard Drive is now "D", where it was previously "I".

If as Roger suggested I changed my "D" drive to "I" (if I knew how to), if it did not work, would it have destroyed anything?

Hope you can help.

[rogleale]

Re: Unable to view my images in Light Room since Restoring my back to factory settings.

Audrey - can you navigate to your HD 'I' and actually open your images that are in there? If you can there is really no need to change the drive letter yet but to do that you have to go to Start>All Programs>Accessories>Run then enter diskmgmt.msc and then hit OK. Nothing will be damaged or changed other than the HD letter.
If I were you now I would do a search on your computer for any file '.lrcat' because that is the one you need to find, all the adjustments you made will be stored in there. Is there any chance that you have it backed up somewhere?

Roger

[Autumn]

Re: Unable to view my images in Light Room since Restoring my back to factory settings.

Thanks Roger. I have restored about 21000 - still another 1000 or so to be reimported.

I had to go back to February and out of 20+ LRcat files there was only one that would open.

Medion Techies told me to back up all my files to my D drive. Fortunately I backed them up to my External Hard drive which is now my D drive.

I don't know where the Lightroom backups on my D drive went to.

When I tried to rename my now 'D' drive (external) to 'I' (as it was before), I couldn't as my 'I' drive is now allocated to the DVD Rewriteable drive and this did not appear when I did Start>All Programs>Accessories>Run then enter diskmgmt.msc, otherwise I would have given the DVD drive another letter.

Anyway, I am relatively happy with having found what I had and will have to download all the pictures taken since February.

Again thanks for your help.