Lightroom going blank

When I open an image for work in LR, after a very few minutes, the screen turns gray, usually showing a bit the last couple of spots I was working on. The hourglass icon appears, and it will remain that way apparently forever, I have given it 20 minutes with no chnage.
If I open Windows Task Manager it says 'program not responding', and I cannot get it to close for several minutes.
It began last week, making LR useless, and I am cosidering uninstalling the program.
Thanks for any advice

Well, I'd say that's something likely haywire with your system rather than Lightroom. Are you using Windows? If so, you could try running a virus/malware scan, but a good simple approach might be to do a System Restore to the latest known good restore point. Try those and post your results!

Sounds like bad memory is destroying your system. Run memtest or another diagnostic.

How many catalogs do you have, and if more than one does it do this with every catalog? If you only have one catalog have you optimized it recently? I haven't used a PC in years but I'd make sure the system is clean.

Fixed it.
I checked my RAM cards and one was dead, so in 2 minutes I had full LR use.
Got a shot of a fiery storm last evening.
My nephew says he sees monsters moving behind the clouds in the top third!
Thanks

Well I thought I had attached a photo to the above reply. I can make them attach about 50% of the time.

trailguy wrote in post #9602552
Fixed it.
I checked my RAM cards and one was dead, so in 2 minutes I had full LR use.
Got a shot of a fiery storm last evening.
My nephew says he sees monsters moving behind the clouds in the top third!
Thanks

If one stick of ram is dead, you need to replace it. Just removing it can cause some other issues like slow loading and a general lack of memory.