Lightroom 6 in Windows 11

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Nigel_O

Original Poster:

3,057 posts

226 months

Friday 1st November
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Just thought this might be useful for anyone upgrading their PC who is currently using an old copy of Lightroom 6.

I've recently upgraded my ancient Gen1 i7 HP laptop to a shiny new 13th Gen i7 Thinkpad running Win11 Pro. I was gradually re-installing all the various apps I use, and I got to LR6 (the last 'perpetual' licensed version of the product). I was pretty miffed to find that I could install it, but due to Adobe turning off the activation servers I wasn't actually able to activate it. I don't do much photography, sometimes going several months between outings, so I was annoyed at the prospect of having to pay Adobe £10pm for software I might not use. I'm sure the latest versions or LR and PS are way better than LR6, but it's adequate for my very amateur tweaking of snaps.

I got some excellent help from the Adobe forums, who informed me there's an offline activation process - worked a treat and I got the app activated after half an hour of faffing between turning wi-fi off for the laptop and using an iPad to get the activation codes (you still need the product key)

The elation didn't last long when I found that LR6 simply won't run in Windows 11.

After grumping about it for a few days, I had a brainwave. I've now created a Windows 10 virtual PC on my Win 11 laptop and installed LR to the virtual machine and it all works perfectly. OK, it's a bit of a faff having to fire up a VM every time I want to use LR, but given the infrequent use, I'm really not too bothered about the extra 30 seconds to launch the app.

Hope this helps

Simpo Two

87,068 posts

272 months

Friday 1st November
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The wonderful thing about 'progress' is that you can spend days getting back to where you were in the first place nuts

GravelBen

15,913 posts

237 months

Friday 1st November
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Ahh Windows 11 - it's kinda like Windows 10, but takes twice as many inputs to do anything.