Windows 7: Search function has stopped

I tried searching for a program in WMC7 & every step of the way WMC7 froze for approximately 30 seconds & sometimes longer. It took minutes to enter a title. I could not even close WMC7 unless I waited a long time. The fastest way to close out was to do Ctrl-Alt-Del & restart. I did a lot of searching which made wonder if Windows itself had a search problem & not just WMC.

So I tried a normal Search function in Start > Search and the only results I get are under the Program and Control Panel headings. It does not find any of my documents.

Control Panel > Indexing states indexing is not running. I went into Advanced > Troubleshooting and it comes back with Problem Found, Windows Search service not running, Not Fixed. The Detailed Information showed this.

Directory
Windows Search data directory
Directory: C:\Program Data\Microsoft\Search\Data\

User reported problems
Problem type: FilesMissingProblem
ResourceUsageProblem

I then went into Control Panel > Programs & Features & turned on Indexing, which was off, but that made no difference. Among my hours of Googling I came across something that said Indexing is no longer used. FWIW my other Win7 PC also has this un-checked but Search does work on it. So maybe Indexing is not used anymore.

I then went into Programs & Features & turned off Windows Search & restarted. Then turned it back on & restarted. But this made no difference.

I looked at Start > services.msc and Windows Search is set on Automatic (Delayed Start).

Also did a sfc /scannow and no problems were found.

Bottom line is the settings are set for Windows Search to work but it’s not happening.

Any ideas how to fix this, short of reinstalling WMC7?

I fixed the problem but it was just by a stroke of luck. Some of the search results I came across mentioned taking ownership & changing the security permission on ProgramData\Microsoft\Search\Data.

Since my search problem seemed to affect Window in general & not just WMC, I looked at the above directory & there were 2 folders in it.

Applications, which had about 3 subfolders & 6 files.
Temp, which had 1 empty folder.

Sometimes you can delete a file or folder & Windows will recreate it. I renamed those 2 folders to see what would happen. The Applications one rebuilt itself & added a couple more files than the original had. Nothing happened with the Temp one.

Windows search now worked & so did WMC search. WMC search starting working right away but had limited results. There was a message at the bottom of the screen stating the index was being rebuilt & after a minute or two it was done & worked for 12 days.

I don’t know what I might have affected in a negative way but so far everything looks normal. I’ll have to compare the old & new Applications folders later.