Why can't we stop SearchIndexer.exe?

Sponsored Links

When playing online games (or performing other intense activities like video
editing) it can really screw up the whole experience.

I don't like not being on control of what my PC is doing. It feels like I
am along for the ride instead of driving as I should be.

The human should always get what it wants - not be the slave of the machine.

You are in control of the computer ... you just have to do things a certain
way :).

You have to disable the windows search service from the services mmc (you
can click start and type services to access it).

#1 You can disable the service from the Computer Management Console if you
really want to, but don't do this.

#2 If you are running a game, Vista turns off the search indexer
automatically. And with other applications it runs in a low priority, the
only performance bottleneck you will notice is the HD usage.

#3 Most importantly, once Vista's search indexer gets your computer indexed
it very seldom has to run and consumes virtually no performance from your
computer. So the first couple of days while it is organizing your computer,
it will run more often, but after that, the only time it runs is when there
are changes to your documents or email, and the performance it consumes is
virtually none at that point.

So let it get your computer indexed, and then forget about it.

I disagree with you point #3. I bought a brand new HP computer 2 months ago
and my HD is constantly turning on for 20 minute straight intervals with
about 10 minute breaks in between - each time I open up the Reliability and
Performance Monitor and it is searchindexer.exe! That is overkill, and all
i'm doing is surfing the web and making documents for schoolwork. I admit,
it is possible that my pc is screwed up, but to be honest this is my 3rd
computer that I have bought with Vista (i actually returned the previous 2
because the HD's would not shut off!, and I thought it was due to some
defect: NOPE, just Vista hard at work). So now I decided to just accept the
HD issue and turn off indexer, and it is working GREAT!

Indexer may do good things, but if my HD has to be constantly on and making
the geiger counter noise about 3 feet from my face ALL DAY LONG it isn't
worth it.

So, to anyone else who wants to shut it off completely here are the steps:

Click Start
Click Conrol Panel
Click System and Maintenance
Click Administrative Tools
Double click Services
If asked, click Continue
Scroll down to and Right Click Windows Search
Select DISABLE

YOU ARE FREE!!!

If you kill the Windows Search service, then you miss out on one of the best
new features in Vista.

You shouldn't be seeing excessive CPU usage with SearchIndexer.exe, since by
default it's configured to reduce its activity as you use the machine. If
you are then this suggests to me that your index / catalog has become
corrupted.

Under normal scenarios SearchIndexer.exe shouldn't be appearing in the
Reliability and Performance Monitor. If you can look in Problem Reports and
Solutions and get the "Bucket Id" for any of these crashes I can take a look
at them in our internal database ...

Searchindexer.exe definately has something go wrong with it occasionally. I
have had my system for several weeks now and two days ago it suddenly went
haywire. I was unable to delete anything and the process was running at 100%.
I left it on overnight to see if it would finish up but it never did. When I
disabled the service I was able to delete things again...wierd. I suspect
eventually someone will find there is a strange combination of events that
causes the service to get confused.

For now, its disabled (for the record I have not had a need for it yet, the
virtual views and stuff, I have not change my way of doing things enough to
have a use for them yet.)

The MS people are clueless about the problems with their software..
that guy that you are replying to is from MS

After completing the above steps Windows Search does indeed stop.
However after about 1 minute it starts back up.

I noticed that I recently installed an updated to Office 2007. This
update may have done something to automatically restart Windows Search.

Anyone else seen this?

Hey guys, I went through this recently, and now it's cropped up again.

Symptoms: After turning off the annoying "Are you sure you want to
allow this program to run?" feature, I started running into problems
when copying, moving, or deleting files on my new Vista PC.

Whenever I did those things, I'd get the "Calculating time to perform
this function..." popup and it would never ever go away (unless you shut
it down through the Task Manager). I would get one of these instances
for each file I would rename, copy, move, or delete.

I noticed my CPU was pegging at 50% all the time. It was the
SearchIndexer.exe. I tried to turn it off. It'd fire back up.

SO...I called Dell tech support and the guy finally figured out that
somehow the indexing feature was turned on for my backup hard disk.
Turning that off fixed the problem.

It started happening again in the last couple days. I walked through
Disabling it in the Services window and then it finally shut down and
stay shut down when I tackled it in the Task Manager again. Sheesh.

You can right click on a folder and make changes to the indexer there to not
index the folder and it sets all files in the folder and folder to not
index.

I am often running many applications, and even though I have 2Gig of RAM
the perf monitor shows pagefile.sys in the perf list for IO when I start
shutting things off for a reboot or a shutdown. When thats done, it
then shows SearchIndexer.exe for up to a minute thrashing my hard disk
wildy. I have followed the excellent help provided here and turned the
**** thing off, HOORAH!

So far, I've only been able to stop it with a good firewall. A firewall
because SearchIndexer.exe attempts to access the internet.

This is only one of the programs that Microsoft uses to hijack your
computer and transmit data elsewhere.

Microsoft :mad: has been using such programs since they figured out
that they could use online software registration as an opening to
collect data on your computer system and not just the one piece of
software that you were willingly registering at that time.

It's not running here, but I have search and indexing turned OFF.

Do some research before posting this fake information, SeachIndexer does not
do what you have just stated.

Ok "searchindexer.exe" is not a virus and it is a Windows program. You
can remove it by uninstalling "Windows Search 4.0".

This program just indexes files on your computer so if you search for
them in the future it will be a quicker search.

Good luck. Hope this helps.

To modify Indexing Service performance
Open Computer Management.
In the console tree, click Indexing Service:Computer Management

On the Action menu, click Stop (It may be stopped already).

On the Action menu, point to All Tasks, and then click Tune
Performance.

In the Indexing Service Usage dialog box, select the option that best
fits the way Indexing Service is used on your computer.

If you selected Customize, click the Customize button and proceed to
**. If you did not select Customize, continue to ***.

** . In the Desired Performance dialog box, move the Indexing slider to
Lazy for less immediate indexing or to Instant for immediate indexing of
new and changed documents. Lazy indexing uses fewer resources; Instant
indexing uses as much of the computer's resources as it can.

Move the Querying slider to Low load if you expect to process only a
few queries at a time or to High load if you expect to process many
queries at a time. Low load uses fewer resources; high load uses more.

***Close the Desired Performance dialog box.

Close the Indexing Service Usage dialog box and restart Indexing
Service.

I have this running on my computer and I have Windows XP. Should it be
there or should I get rid of it. My computer has been making very loud
beeping sounds, perhaps this could be the cause?

Your computer might be overheating if it is making beeping sounds. A
fan might have died or maybe you had something installed recently? ie a
harddrive? I would take it in for service before you damage the
motherboard.

Thank you. I did a system restore to a day before the beeping started
and it isn't beeping any more so whatever was causing it must have been
removed in this process. I did install a new music sharing program that
had a ton of spyware subsequently found by my Spyware Detector, so maybe
that was the culprit.
This is a great forum and I really appreciate the advice given.

Why not just del c:\windows\system32\searchindexer.exe (after you
stop/disable the service, of course).

Better yet, grab an opensuse 11.1 CD.....

If you're going to do that then try the Live CD first - Opensuse has far
less in-built printer support than other distros...