When I open Lightroom 4, it will not infrequently (every day or two or three) hang -- typically images are visible in the filmstrip, but the central work area just says "loading," and if I try to click on anything, the little Windows circle starts spinning indicating that the program is hung. All I can do is use Task Manager to kill the program. Re-starting the application invariably leads to the same result.
I have discovered a simple solution. I go to the c:\users\username\appdata\roaming\adobe\lightroom folder, delete the preferences file, and now Lightroom will open without problem. But now the problem is that I have lost my preferences. No big deal, but it takes me a minute or so to set the preferences back to where I want them.
Reset the preferences, or leave them in the default settings, doesn’t matter: I know for certain that at some point in the near future Lightroom will hang again, and again I will have to delete the preferences file to fix things.
I have uninstalled and reinstalled multiple times, to no benefit. I have even combed the registry after uninstalling, deleting every remaining reference to Lightroom or LR4, all to no avail. I should add that I had the same problem with Lightroom 3, but it happened much less often.
I am running Windows 7 64-bit. It's a very clean system, all Windows updates installed, never any malware, only standard, commerical applications installed.
Any ideas?