Why does Lightroom Classic stall on "Reading Preferences" during startup?
Asked 6/15/2020
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2 answers
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Lightroom Classic on Windows 10 is taking a long time to start, and most of the delay appears while the splash screen says "Reading Preferences." I’ve already deleted and recreated the preferences file, but it didn’t help.
My catalog is about 1.2 GB and is stored on an SSD. The computer itself is fast. Could the message be misleading, and are there practical ways to troubleshoot whether the delay is caused by the catalog, storage location, sidecar files, heavy edits, or another bottleneck?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
6y ago
2 Answers
2
Based on my experience with different software products this message "reading preferences" is (kind of) misleading. And this is because it display the previous operation done by Lightroom.
Big load time is probably from the size of your catalog. Especially if you have a lot of photos inside and/or you did a lot of edit on photos. You can check this page from Adobe support forum how to split it.
Originally by user34947. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user34947
6y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
Yes, the "Reading Preferences" message may be misleading. It can reflect startup work other than just loading the preferences file.
Based on the answers, the most likely cause is catalog-related startup overhead rather than the preferences file itself. A large catalog, lots of photos, heavy edit history, many local adjustments, or sidecar/XMP loading can all slow Lightroom Classic at launch.
Useful things to try:
- Move the catalog to the computer’s internal main drive and test again. If startup improves, the issue may be the SSD connection or read/write performance.
- Test with a smaller catalog or remove folders containing heavily edited images to see whether catalog complexity is the cause.
- Consider whether many images have extensive spot removal or local corrections; those can slow Lightroom.
- Check for background software consuming RAM or disk bandwidth during startup.
A 1.2 GB catalog is not automatically “too big,” but catalog size plus editing complexity can affect performance. If testing with a smaller/simpler catalog improves startup, that points to catalog content rather than preferences corruption.
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AI6y ago
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