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PDR will not open, or everything is grayed out

Two of the three most common causes are not faults at all, so it is worth ruling them out before anything else.

1. Check whether it is locked rather than broken. On a brand-new install the six Welcome cards are dimmed and Go to Workspace is grayed out until you have chosen a Library Drive, with a line of text under the heading saying so. That is deliberate, and it is not a trial restriction. The screen PDR opens on.
2. Activate once, with a connection. Until a key has been activated once on a machine, that machine cannot run PDR. There is no offline activation code, no phone activation and no grace period before the first check. Activating your license key.
3. Close it fully and open it again. This is safe and it is also useful: PDR copies the library index at every launch, before the live index is opened, so reopening the app is what creates the next safety copy. Things worth trying before you report.

There is no repair tool and no self-check in 3.0.4 — no “verify my library” command and no crash-recovery prompt. Closing and reopening is the whole of the built-in recovery, and we list that as a gap rather than a feature. Known gaps in 3.0.4.

A Fix stopped, crashed, or will not start

Work through these in order. The first two account for most of it, and neither risks anything you have already done.

1. Give a heavy job time before you call it stuck. Analysis, face recognition and a large import all run in the background and can leave the window feeling occupied for a while before it catches up. Things worth trying before you report.
2. On a free trial, check you are online. A trial has to ask us how much of your file allowance is left before a run can start, so with no connection the run is refused rather than allowed through uncounted. A paid license has no allowance to count and runs a Fix with no network at all. Why a trial Fix needs a connection.
3. Check the Library Drive is connected. Running a Fix and opening full-size photos both need it. Browsing, searching, tagging faces and editing dates do not, which is why the app stays usable and shows a banner instead of failing silently. Things worth trying before you report.
4. Look at the destination before you start again. A run can be canceled from the progress display and PDR stops at the next safe point, handing you the result for the part that ran. Stopping a run part-way.
5. Clear the working folder if a ZIP source was interrupted. A ZIP has to be unpacked before it can be read, and a file held open by a viewer or an antivirus scanner will stop PDR clearing up after itself. The folder holds extracted copies only, so deleting it yourself costs nothing but the time to unpack again. Clearing up after unpacked archives.

Photos are missing, or the Library Drive is not there

Almost always the drive rather than the library. Nothing is lost while it is unplugged.

1. Reconnect the drive. When it is missing PDR says so in a banner rather than failing quietly, and the banner clears when the drive comes back. Things worth trying before you report.
2. A different drive letter is handled for you. If the drive returns as a different letter, PDR repairs the stored locations by itself. There is nothing to re-point by hand. Coming back on a different drive letter.
3. Carry on with the parts that do not need it. You can still browse, search, tag faces and edit dates with the drive disconnected, and the Welcome cards stay lit on later launches even when the drive is unplugged. The screen PDR opens on.

If individual photos are missing rather than all of them, that is a different question — see when one file or one transfer fails and, if a search is returning the wrong thing, the recovery route below.

A transfer to a NAS or share failed, or Send to Phone will not connect

PDR treats a network destination differently from a local one, and the failure messages around it are the part of 3.0.4 we are least happy with.

1. Check local disk space as well as the destination. A Fix to a mapped drive or a UNC path is built in a staging folder on your own machine first and transferred across in one pass, so you need room in both places. Running a Fix to a NAS or network share.
2. Start the transfer again from the beginning. Nothing records how far a transfer got, so there is no resume. The staging copy is kept, which at least means the run itself does not have to be repeated. Running a Fix to a NAS or network share.
3. Send to Phone: same wi-fi, and it does not wait. The share runs off a small server on your own PC, stops after fifteen minutes, stops immediately when you close the window, and carries up to 200 files. One share at a time. Send to Phone, and the server it opens.

A license will not activate, or premium features have locked

Your library, your photos and everything you have already produced are untouched by any of this. Only the premium features lock.

1. First activation needs a connection. It is the only step that always does. Paste the key from your confirmation email into the license badge in the title bar — spacing and capitals do not matter — and activate. There is no account to create. Activating your license key.
2. Locked after a week offline? Press Refresh. PDR allows seven days between successful checks, but nothing re-checks on its own: a launch re-reads the stored result and works out how old it is. The only ways to restart the seven days are the Refresh button in the license panel and re-activating. A lifetime license never expires and skips this entirely. Working offline, and the seven-day grace.
3. “Inactive”, “expired” or “disabled” is the provider’s verdict. PDR repeats what the payment provider says rather than second-guessing it, so if that verdict is wrong it is a purchase question rather than an app question — and worth telling us with the exact wording you saw. Activating your license key.
4. Moving to a new PC? Remove it from the old one first. The stored license is tied to this machine, and a substantial hardware change can be enough to change the identifier PDR computes. Devices, and moving to a new PC.

A trial is a different question from a license: the allowances are counted on our side and a trial Fix is refused when it cannot reach us. What the free trial allows.

An AI model will not download, or is far bigger than expected

AI features are switched off until you turn them on, and the model each one needs is fetched once and then never again.

1. The captions model is about 700 MB, not 150 MB. PDR’s own confirmation box says about 150 MB and the real figure is around 700 MB. That is a known defect in 3.0.4, not a stalled download, and it matters most on a metered connection. Optional AI model downloads.
2. Only three models are ever fetched. Subject tagging and video captions come from Hugging Face, collage background removal from GitHub. Face detection and face matching ship inside PDR and are loaded from your own disk, so they never download at all. Optional AI model downloads.
3. Nothing starts until you press the button that needs it. Every download shows a progress bar, and once the file is on your disk that feature works with no network. Your photographs are never sent anywhere to be analyzed. Optional AI model downloads.
4. Check the space they take before you retry. Settings lists the optional models and what they are costing you on disk. The optional models and the space they take.

Two further models sit in the build and are never fetched: PDR carries the plumbing for AI face restoration and AI upscaling, but those controls are switched off in 3.0.4, so nothing can reach them and nothing downloads them. If you are waiting for one of those, it is not going to arrive. Optional AI model downloads.

Search is returning the wrong thing, or I need something back

This is the route where the limits matter most, so they are stated before the steps rather than after them.

1. If you have just saved a batch of dates, undo it now. A Saved N files panel appears at the top of Needs dates with an Undo next to it, and it dismisses itself roughly sixty seconds after the save. Once it has gone, no other control takes that batch back. It also covers the last save only. Reversing a whole batch of saved date corrections.
2. Prefer restoring a dated copy over rebuilding. Restoring is the route that keeps the connections a rebuild throws away. Copies are taken at every launch without being asked: the last five, then one surviving per day for a week and one per week for a month. Rebuilding a damaged index.
3. Count the states, not the files. The number of copies is an upper bound. On the machine we test against, thirteen launch copies held only eight genuinely different states, because launches that found the library unchanged produce identical files. Rebuilding a damaged index.
4. After a power cut, expect the library to be fine and the last few minutes not to be. PDR does not force every change to the disk platter immediately, which buys a great deal of speed while indexing and risks losing the most recent committed changes when the power goes. A crash of the application alone is a stronger story: the index should be intact when you reopen it. Surviving a crash or a power cut.

No automatic copy is taken before a Fix, a rebuild, an organizing pass or a restore — only before four People actions. If you want one before a big job, take it yourself from Settings › Backup, where copies you make by hand are never removed automatically. Rebuilding a damaged index.