Windows Search Woes

OEM · 31 Oct 2010

This might help, I'm no expert, but I have played around with indexing and search myself because I didn't like the idea of windows indexing everything.

There are many options to help manage indexing & searching in GP. Open your local group policy editor, Administrative Templates/Windows Components/Search.

Attachment 109692

In search you will find many options that might help cool down that cpu and slow down the need for Windows to do all this indexing. You can also set times for indexing and mark partitions for no indexing, etc.

Honestly if you go to Control Panel and type index, choose index options, you can select from there what windows will index and what it won't under the modify button. When searching for whats marked sometimes its not always clear. For example the Documents folder of a user might be indexed, but the users folder in the modify indexing tree won't show the user's block blue even though it is indexing a users Documents. The only thing I have it index is my start menu. Just because something isn't indexed, doesn't mean windows won't find it during a search, it will. It just might take longer, you might have seen that banner at the top of explorer a time or two when you were searching in un-indexed folders.

devlin7 · 01 Nov 2010

Thanks OEM. I will take a look at these setting s and see what I can achieve.

OEM · 01 Nov 2010

devlin7 said:

Thanks OEM. I will take a look at these setting s and see what I can achieve.

Your Welcome, Hope it Helps.

I also believe you can set a task schedule to index only at certain times, but not positive, ...here's something I found but have not tried.

You can schedule a task to start the indexer.

Create a new task using 'Task Scheduler' in 'Control Panel' | 'Administrative Tools'.

In the Program/script: section type in 'net' and in the Add arguments (optional): type in 'start "windows search"'. Windows search is enclosed by quotes.

After you create the scheduled task, edit it and in the General tab check 'Run with highest privileges'.

Then indexing will run at the scheduled time.

Above source: Is there a way to schedule the time Windows 7 runs Indexing

It was a post of some ones in the above linked thread. You might want to read the whole thing.

Also, here's a few links I found that might help as well:

Change advanced indexing options
Windows Search: Technical FAQ

On the second above link, to the left of that page after viewing whats on the current page, it might help to choose Windows7.

Good Luck

winsupertweaker · 02 Nov 2010

I suggest reducing the amount of System Restore space used on each computer. By default, it's about 10% of each PC's hard drive. I push the slider all the way to the left. No need for Gigabytes of System Restore files, a 500 MB to a Gigabyte is plenty. You can go back a couple of days resetting this way, and that's it. Imagine going back 3 full months----yikes! Another default setting in all Windows XP - 7 OSes that was over-kill. So all the time the workstations are being used, the system is constantly indexing and a couple times a day making restore points.

Also. Shut off the public sharing of other contents you do not use at each station. You may have all public folders between workstations mapping out each folder on each machine. Just a few tweaks in that area can make a big difference as well.

And check each machine to see if it's Defragging too often. Both Vista and Win7 defraggers take a long time. But in your case, it's necessary to have the machines automated. I would suggest the machines defragging once a month at different intervals. That puts a load on a CPU as well...

OEM · 08 Dec 2010

Acemaniac said:

I suggest reducing the amount of System Restore space used on each computer. By default, it's about 10% of each PC's hard drive. I push the slider all the way to the left. No need for Gigabytes of System Restore files, a 500 MB to a Gigabyte is plenty. You can go back a couple of days resetting this way, and that's it. Imagine going back 3 full months----yikes! Another default setting in all Windows XP - 7 OSes that was over-kill. So all the time the workstations are being used, the system is constantly indexing and a couple times a day making restore points.

Also. Shut off the public sharing of other contents you do not use at each station. You may have all public folders between workstations mapping out each folder on each machine. Just a few tweaks in that area can make a big difference as well.

And check each machine to see if it's Defragging too often. Both Vista and Win7 defraggers take a long time. But in your case, it's necessary to have the machines automated. I would suggest the machines defragging once a month at different intervals. That puts a load on a CPU as well...

+1

...you just added to my "Things to DO" list, although my MS/defraging/ is off.

But for the OP, the thought of file sharing public or others folders, &
Auto Defraging at different intervals, sounds good to me as possibility.

Also, the option for it do this every time a drive is detected (connected), if someone is swapping out/connecting drives internal or external, (even temporally for file moves/copies), could be slowing him or others down as well.

devlin7 · 09 Dec 2010

Thanks for all the posts. Things have looked a lot better after enabling the GP that changes which files are indexed. I seriously thought about uninstalling the Windows Indexing completely but then users get warnings from most MS applications when they start them up.

I have a few weird performance issues this year with Windows 7. I have had a number of machines simply never process their Group policies and regardless of what you do it just doesn't get to the logon screen. The next day however it works just like a new one. I thought it might have been DEFENDER. I was thinking of getting rid of defender completely, any suggestions? Is disabling the service enough?