diff --git a/solr/core/src/java/org/apache/solr/update/UpdateLog.java b/solr/core/src/java/org/apache/solr/update/UpdateLog.java
index 490c371eda6..f6d5226a79e 100644
--- a/solr/core/src/java/org/apache/solr/update/UpdateLog.java
+++ b/solr/core/src/java/org/apache/solr/update/UpdateLog.java
@@ -211,8 +211,13 @@ public class UpdateLog implements PluginInfoInitialized {
       newestLogsOnStartup.addFirst(ll);
       if (newestLogsOnStartup.size() >= 2) break;
     }
-    
-    versionInfo = new VersionInfo(this, 256);
+
+    try {
+      versionInfo = new VersionInfo(this, 256);
+    } catch (SolrException e) {
+      throw new SolrException(SolrException.ErrorCode.SERVER_ERROR,
+                              "Unable to use updateLog: " + e.getMessage(), e);
+    }
 
     // TODO: these startingVersions assume that we successfully recover from all non-complete tlogs.
     UpdateLog.RecentUpdates startingUpdates = getRecentUpdates();
diff --git a/solr/example/solr/collection1/conf/schema.xml b/solr/example/solr/collection1/conf/schema.xml
index af2006a0778..b62e691c1d0 100755
--- a/solr/example/solr/collection1/conf/schema.xml
+++ b/solr/example/solr/collection1/conf/schema.xml
@@ -148,7 +148,7 @@
 
    <field name="payloads" type="payloads" indexed="true" stored="true"/>
 
-   <field name="_version_" type="long" indexed="true" stored="true"/>
+   <!-- field name="_version_" type="long" indexed="true" stored="true"/ -->
 
    <!-- Uncommenting the following will create a "timestamp" field using
         a default value of "NOW" to indicate when each document was indexed.