Getting an error saying “The version check was unsuccessful” when you try to check for updates to Lightroom? It’s Adobe’s fault, not yours.
As of yesterday, May 18th, Adobe has disabled the “Check for Updates” feature under Lightroom’s Help menu. Adobe has discovered a rare bug in the previous release and has stopped all update checking until they have it fixed.
Version Check Unsuccessful
The Version Check Was Unsuccessful
If you see the message, “The Version Check Was Unsuccessful” when checking for Lightroom updates, you may be tempted to troubleshoot your network connection.
Don’t bother: it’s not your computer’s fault.
According to Adobe employee, Jeffrey Tranberry at Photoshop.com, “The update mechanism has been temporarily turned off until we can address this issue: Potential JPEG Bug in Lightroom 3.4 and Camera Raw 6.4. It will be reenabled once the 3.4.1 update is available next week.”
Adobe’s official announcement says that they are trying to squash a rare bug which can cause image corruption to JPEG files containing “an unusually large block of private camera data.”
They go on to say that “To date we’ve only found one camera that generates these large blocks of private data, the HP PhotoSmart R607.” A fix is expected to be available by Friday, May 27th.
Downloading Updates
You can still download and install the latest Lightroom update (version 3.4) by going directly to the downloads section of the Adobe website. The latest Lightroom updates are listed under “Product Updates” in the right-hand panel about half way down. There’s a link for Windows and another for Mac.
