Indexing and Searching broken

There's no harm having an empty Search Index.

You've basically told Search Index not to store additional information in a DB for any file. The Index facilitates searching on attributes; as in the year an album was released, or the composer on the album.

When this is all said and done, the Index will start storing that information again.

The goal of this exercise is to clear out everything before moving the index to a new location.

When there are no entries shown in teh Summary, click OK
close Indexing options and restart you machine.

It still wants to index the Start Menu --- how do I get rid of that


Figured it out!!

Slartybart said:

That's interesting....
the 2nd screen shot shows indexing complete with an 'active' pause button
pushing the pause button AFTER index complete took about 4 mins to 'inactivate' the pause button

I'm going to add one step to the plan and move restore libraries to the end

Indexing seems to be tripping over itself - might be from having the C:\drive and Program Files indexed - we fixed that early on.

Add step: clear the index of all entries, add them back one at a time once indexing settles down

On the Indexing Options dialog, click modify - that opens the indexed locations
click on show all locations
then click on Internet Explorer entry under summary of selected locations to show the checked locations
untick any checkbox that is ticked
you can scroll up and down the list - unticking as you go, or you can click an entry in the summary to go directly to that entry in the change slected locations.
as you untick , the entry in the summary should disappear.

The goal of this exercise is to clear out everything before moving the index to a new location.
When there are no entries shown in teh Summary, click OK
close Indexing options and restart you machine.

after the restart, rebuild the index
since there are no entries to be indexed, it should be realtively quick.
It does have to clean up the entries it already had, so it might take some time.
how long? It's impossible to say on your machine
- indexing is slow, but 4 mins to inactivate the pause button is a long time even for Search index.

When the rebuild shows completed, we'll switch gears and work on restoring the Libraries
That will be a breeze compared to all of the hoops of straightening out the Search Index

done

Sorry for the delay.

Alright, that looks promising - 0 items indexed (expected), Indexing complete and the pause button is inactive.

Libraries -> Right click on Libraries in the navigation pane of explorer
click Restore default libraries.

The 4 std Libraries (Documents, Music, Pictures, Videos) should now be available . There might/should be two locations in each library by default.

This one is always difficult to describe.
Your My folders that correspond to the library (Library Documents has My Documents, etc)
Plus the Public folders that correcpond to the Library.

It will be clear when you open any of the Libraries.

The next step is to discuss how Libraries can help and how they can not help.
Looking at the previous Library setup on your machine in post# 21, post# 23, and post# 32 shows that only Pictures and Music need some work. Documents and Videos Libraries are fine after teh Restor Library action.

I'll wait until you post that is what you see before putting anything back in the Libraies.

Bill

Slartybart said:

Sorry for the delay.

Alright, that looks promising - 0 items indexed (expected), Indexing complete and the pause button is inactive.

Libraries -> Right click on Libraries in the navigation pane of explorer
click Restore default libraries.

The 4 std Libraries (Documents, Music, Pictures, Videos) should now be available . There might/should be two locations in each library by default.

This one is always difficult to describe.
Your My folders that correspond to the library (Library Documents has My Documents, etc)
Plus the Public folders that correcpond to the Library.

It will be clear when you open any of the Libraries.

The next step is to discuss how Libraries can help and how they can not help.
Looking at the previous Library setup on your machine in post# 21, post# 23, and post# 32 shows that only Pictures and Music need some work. Documents and Videos Libraries are fine after teh Restor Library action.

I'll wait until you post that is what you see before putting anything back in the Libraies.

Bill

Is this what you want to see. I am not sure how it go that way because I don't recall doing the restore!

Excellent - thanks.

See if Indexing Options shows anything interesting. The number of files indexed... folders in the indexed locations.
You don't have to do anything other than check to see if it's getting populated.

If you want, post a screen shot.

Slartybart said:

Excellent - thanks.

See if Indexing Options shows anything interesting. The number of files indexed... folders in the indexed locations.
You don't have to do anything other than check to see if it's getting populated.

If you want, post a screen shot.

Is this what you expect?

Not exactly, but most likely due to teh fact that there are no idexed locations configured.

A little background on Libraries and then we'll see if telling Search to index locations gets things straightened out.

Let's say you have a folder called Holiday and it contains pictures taken while on vacation somewhere on your machine.
The Holiday folder is not in the Indexed Locations
You then add the Holiday folder to your Pictures Library

By adding Holiday to the Pictures Library, they are indexed.
It's part of the way Libraries work.

So I half expected something in the summary list.

Alright, let's put some entries in the Indexed Locations.
Stick with the basic entires, Interent Explorer History, Start Menu, Your user.
Too many entries slows Indexing down and this might have been the cause of the problem. I don't know what casued the problem, but that's not important now.

On the Indexing Options windows
Click on modify which opens the Indexed Locations window.
then on the Indexed Locations window
click the show all locations button
tick Internet Explorer History
then expand C:\
then expand Users
I only have my own user profile ticked - I don't ever search Public or Default
tick your user profile name
then expand that
remove the tick from Appdata

scroll teh list until C:\ is visible again and
expand Program Data
expand Microsoft
expand Windows
tick Start menu

then click the OK button

Post a screen shot of the Indexing Options window.

Thanks, we're almost there... I hope. I only have one trick left in the back after this.

Slartybart said:

Not exactly, but most likely due to teh fact that there are no idexed locations configured.

A little background on Libraries and then we'll see if telling Search to index locations gets things straightened out.

Let's say you have a folder called Holiday and it contains pictures taken while on vacation somewhere on your machine.
The Holiday folder is not in the Indexed Locations
You then add the Holiday folder to your Pictures Library

By adding Holiday to the Pictures Library, they are indexed.
It's part of the way Libraries work.

So I half expected something in the summary list.

Alright, let's put some entries in the Indexed Locations.
Stick with the basic entires, Interent Explorer History, Start Menu, Your user.
Too many entries slows Indexing down and this might have been the cause of the problem. I don't know what casued the problem, but that's not important now.

On the Indexing Options windows
Click on modify which opens the Indexed Locations window.
then on the Indexed Locations window
click the show all locations button
tick Internet Explorer History
then expand C:\
then expand Users
I only have my own user profile ticked - I don't ever search Public or Default
tick your user profile name
then expand that
remove the tick from Appdata

scroll teh list until C:\ is visible again and
expand Program Data
expand Microsoft
expand Windows
tick Start menu

then click the OK button

Post a screen shot of the Indexing Options window.

Thanks, we're almost there... I hope. I only have one trick left in the back after this.

Still showing 0

Hmmm,

Did you rebuild the index? I might not have asked you to do that, but please do it now.
The searchindex crawler takes a while to populate the index. Rebuilding it speeds up that process.

While you're waiting for the Index to rebuild, please follow this tutorial: SF Diagnostic Tool - Using for Troubleshooting

I'll be able to read event logs and see what services are running.

Post the resulting output per the tutorial.

Thanks