Aperture not working to get import previews and thus import images

Question

I cannot seem to get images to appear int eh Import Window's preview pane, and thus cannot import them. I have some 1600 images from a recent shoot in a sub-folder on an external drive (in two locations actually) and Aperture is not hunting them down. I have tried importing files on the desktop as a test and the same problem, no previews and no chance to import. All my OS and Aperture updates are installed and I did a restart to no avail.
I know that this version of Aperture, along with the user manually select to not import into a New Project (grip for Apple dev if they are reading), that previews take long to load and freeze the Import process on my setup. So, it could be that it is taking forever to get 1600 previews, but viewing them in a finder window shows no problems getting previews.
Any pointers as to what the problem might be?

Answer 1

Chris G. wrote:
I cannot seem to get images to appear in the Import Window's preview pane, and thus cannot import them.
Any pointers as to what the problem might be?
I have occasionally had this problem and found either waiting a while or cancelling the Import and then retrying the Import (and being patient) works.
The workflow I use includes giving a custom master/version name to the appropriate images from the camera, such as "Judy in the Garden", importing those pics of Judy, and then supplying another master/version name, such as "Punch Drunk" for the appropriate images of Punch, importing those, and so on. So it can take many iterations to pull all the images in. Often the imports work as you would expect but then suddenly, nothing appears to happen and cancel and I redo it. My suspicion is Aperture is busy doing some housekeeping or other (or hung) but since a retry or two does the trick, I don't worry about it.