Home Forums Peripherals & Multimedia Audio, Video, Photography iPhoto 9.4.2 hangs at start up (revised)

iPhoto 9.4.2 on MBP late 2007, OS 10.8.2
On start up, IPhoto goes to repair mode and starts to repair permissions and rebuild the database. This takes ~an hour to complete. Until this is done, no other iPhoto functions work i.e. scrolling through library, printing, importing, etc. Activity Monitor shows iPhoto using about 25% CPU capacity during this time. Non-iPhoto functions work fine.
640 GB HD, 304 GB used.
What next, please.
Thanks
Rick in Maine

OK, I've messed around with iPhoto more. When I "rebuild the database" from iPhoto First Aid it clears up the problem...until I quit and restart. Then I have to rebuild the database again before I can use iPhoto.

It's possible your iPhoto Library has problems beyond the Rebuild function's ability to repair. An alternative could be to back up* the Library and rebuild it with iPhoto Library Manager**. iLM's approach actually recreates the Library using iPhoto's albumdata.xml file, and may yield a properly working Library, albeit without items like slideshows, books or calendars, but with albums and keywords, faces etc.

* iLM doesn't overwrite iPhoto's original Library, but any operation with the latter warrants a backup.
**) Fat Cat's iLM page mentions a trial download, but doesn't specify limitations.

Thanks so much for the reply. I downloaded iLM and am reading the info now. Will try it if it seems like the answer.
Grateful to you.
Rick in Maine

Be sure and let us know if ILM solves the problem or not.

fatcat has very good customer service. they reply quickly to email if you have any problems

I glad to tell you that iLM has apparently fixed the problem. It took about 26 hours to rebuild the iPhoto Library of abut 10,500 photos. CPU use was high enough to slow down the use of other applications while it was working.
Thanks to everybody for the good help.

Rick in Maine

I'm glad to hear you had success fixing the problem you found yourself in. Thanks for letting us know.

fwiw, I don't consider iphoto "safe" to hold more than about 5,000 photos. I recommend users switch to aperture, which besides having a lot more useful features, has vaults which are good for offloading pics you're not working with atm. (useful for projects like if you are a wedding photographer)

I've seen iphoto tank on too many occasions when stuffed with 7000+ pictures.