Accidently deleted LR file

[Jackie]

I was deleting photos from my hard drive and wasn't paying attention and deleted my Lightroom file from "My Pictures" and from the recycling bin. I know - stupid thing to do! Anyway I uninstalled, turned off computer, reloaded, restarted computer. I thought everything was fine but when I click the LR icon the following comes up:
"Warning Lightroom must quit because catalog named Lightroom.Ircat is not writeable and cannot be opened. This could be caused by incorrect permissions or because another Lightroom application is using the catalog. You may select a different catalog the next time you run Lightroom by holding down the control key while Lightroom launches."
Anyone have any ideas to get it back.
Thanks,
Jackie

[Rob Sylvan]

Sounds like you need to create a new catalog.

- Hold down the Ctrl key and launch Lightroom. The Select Catalog dialog will appear.
- Click Create New Catalog.
- Navigate to where you want the new catalog to be created, give it a name, click Save

Lightroom will open with this new empty catalog ready for you to start importing. I strongly suggest using the catalog backup function, and saving the backup copy to a second drive. ;)

[Jackie]

Rob -
Thank you so very much!!! I can't tell you how many times I uninstalled and reinstalled only to have the same warning appear. Your suggestion worked perfectly and you can bet I will be backing it up.
Thank you again - and again, I thought sure I had ruined the whole thing.
Jackie

[Rob Sylvan]

Cool. Glad it helped. :)