Search indexer only works after service is restarted

richstant · Oct 13, 2021

When I first upgraded to win11, the search indexer got underway. However I noticed after a few hours that it had got stuck without finishing - 'settings' says 'temporarily paused, will restart automatically', while under advanced indexing it just shows as 'paused'. It then just sat like that without starting again for the next day. I restarted the windows search service and it kicked back into life & completed. However after a reboot, the same thing happens - it sits on 'paused' and nothing new is indexed until I restart the search service. I tried rebuilding the search index, and the same thing happened - got so far, then paused & service needs restarting to kick it back into life.

Any thoughts on how to avoid having to restart the service every time I reboot? It's currently set to 'automatic (delayed start)', I've also tried 'automatic', to no avail.

Thanks!

The-Hive · Oct 13, 2021

richstant said:
When I first upgraded to win11, the search indexer got underway. However I noticed after a few hours that it had got stuck without finishing - 'settings' says 'temporarily paused, will restart automatically', while under advanced indexing it just shows as 'paused'. It then just sat like that without starting again for the next day. I restarted the windows search service and it kicked back into life & completed. However after a reboot, the same thing happens - it sits on 'paused' and nothing new is indexed until I restart the search service. I tried rebuilding the search index, and the same thing happened - got so far, then paused & service needs restarting to kick it back into life.

Any thoughts on how to avoid having to restart the service every time I reboot? It's currently set to 'automatic (delayed start)', I've also tried 'automatic', to no avail.

Thanks!

Just checked mine, it is automatic (delayed start) it was running and had done the indexing. Mine was an upgrade from Win 10 and I am on build 22000.258 sorry I cannot be more helpful but the guys on this forum are ar :) e pretty clever

Rob Devon · Oct 20, 2021

richstant said:
When I first upgraded to win11, the search indexer got underway. However I noticed after a few hours that it had got stuck without finishing - 'settings' says 'temporarily paused, will restart automatically', while under advanced indexing it just shows as 'paused'. It then just sat like that without starting again for the next day. I restarted the windows search service and it kicked back into life & completed. However after a reboot, the same thing happens - it sits on 'paused' and nothing new is indexed until I restart the search service. I tried rebuilding the search index, and the same thing happened - got so far, then paused & service needs restarting to kick it back into life.

Any thoughts on how to avoid having to restart the service every time I reboot? It's currently set to 'automatic (delayed start)', I've also tried 'automatic', to no avail.

Thanks!

I have exactly the same problem. Indexing starts off fine, then gradually slows and the Indexing options dialog displays "indexing speed is reduced due to user activity" even when the PC has nothing else running. Eventually it pauses. I can restart it from Services but it soon slows and pauses again. Restarting kicks it back into life for a while till the same errors recur. Mine is a clean install of Win 11 on an new PC build. Having spent a day setting it up I really don't want to start over with Win 10 but can't work without a reliable search for files and emails.

I have tried the troubleshooting options but so far without success. Any ideas...

?

TigerTom · Oct 20, 2021

Wasn't it the general idea to de-prioritize background apps in W11?

Rob Devon · Oct 20, 2021

Latest on this problem is that my PC is telling me the index is now complete, with approx 200,000 items indexed. And Outlook no longer displays the "results may be incomplete as indexing is in progress" message.

Searching for files in Windows Explorer seems to be working well, and very quickly compared to my old machine.

However, searching within Outlook delivers no results, irrespective of what criteria I set...

Don't you just love Microsoft!!

Rob Devon · Oct 26, 2021

Just to close this thread from my perspective, I tried everything I could think of to get the Outlook index working, but without success. So I have wiped my system drive and rebuilt from scratch with Windows 10 Pro 64bit, which is working just fine. I'm now firmly at the back of the queue for the Windows 11 transition, hoping that by the time I get there the problem will have been fixed.

Interested to hear if anyone else has had similar difficulties...?

TigerTom · Oct 26, 2021

I see that you had excluded AppData in your search settings, but ist't THAT exactly the place where Oulook stores its mail files ...?

Rob Devon · Oct 26, 2021

No I keep my Outlook data files on a different drive - "Data SSD D:" - alongside the rest of my user data in order that they are kept routinely backed up. Indexing works fine on Windows 10 in this configuration.

chmillman · Dec 16, 2021

Experiencing exactly the same thing... Goes from "indexing" to "reduced speed" to nothing and then finally to "paused" - and I'm just sitting here watching the screen, nothing else is going on.

Looks like they have completely destroyed Search - what happened to the "see more results" link that opened a window with EVERYTHING that search found on the computer related to what you type?????

And how the !$#@&!! do I turn off web search completely??? - if I want to search the web, I'll use some web search engine like Google... All I want is to find stuff on my computer! I have already turned off the bogus Bing search via registry hack, however the search panel still always defaults to "All" and offers me up web crap I am not interested in. Most often the "best match" is "See web results" when indeed there are dozens of matches in files and folders on this PC. (fixed, see below)

Edit - OK, that last I have been able to reg-hack via this article: How to disable online search from Start Menu in Windows 11

richstant · Dec 16, 2021

chmillman said:
Experiencing exactly the same thing... Goes from "indexing" to "reduced speed" to nothing and then finally to "paused" - and I'm just sitting here watching the screen, nothing else is going on.

Glad it's not just me! Oddly, I have a surface pro 4 as well, and search works fine there. So there's obviously some set of conditions that causes the problems. I just don't know what those conditions are!

ShamrockRig · Dec 16, 2021

Yeah i binned indexing altogether, Especially if its on an SSD theres no need for it. No reg hack was required to turn it off.

chmillman · Dec 17, 2021

Devlin1888 said:
Yeah i binned indexing altogether

How does that work? Doesn't it need an index to find stuff? I have 2 SSD's with 330K+ items indexed, it now says "Indexing complete". So maybe it is now working, just needed a lot of time - last time I had looked it was only at 200K items.

I am still badly missing the "see more results" window opening that I could choose what I want. If anyone has a way to enable that or an add-on which will work that way, I'll buy you a beer!

And of course, my Outlook mails are completely absent from the search. In Win 8.1 they showed up, but I couldn't open them directly from Search anyway (some kind of MAPI error message), so I got used to searching for them only directly in Outlook - so I'm not really put out by that.

ShamrockRig · Dec 17, 2021

my general rule of thumb is

Good CPU and a standard hard drive = Keep indexing on
Slow CPU and any hard drive = Turn indexing off
Any CPU with an SSD = Turn indexing off

Indexing was brought in to help HDD drives mainly.
Main reason i turned it off to be honest was it was using like 10% of my cpu on and off so instead of working out what its issue was i just disabled it which sorted that issue, Searches work just as quick if not quicker than they did prior and theres no load on my cpu from it, It didnt used to use anything noticeable but after an update it did so rip. xD

richstant · Dec 18, 2021

The problem is outlook - you don't get any search function at all if the indexer is off.

ShamrockRig · Dec 18, 2021

richstant said:
The problem is outlook - you don't get any search function at all if the indexer is off.

Hm mine seems fine on this end with it off

Rob Devon · Dec 21, 2021

So I see that Microsoft have finally woken up to the indexing problem in Outlook and proposed a fix. This works for me - better late than never!
Microsoft shares fix for broken Outlook search in Windows 11

MNZ · Dec 22, 2021

I first upgraded to win11, the search indexer got underway. All items were indexed, and there was no issue. But the new emails are not indexed- under the advance tap - it just shows as 'paused'. I restarted the computer, but it showed 'Paused'. I continued the windows search service, and it kicked back into life & completed. However, after a reboot, the same thing happens - it sits on 'paused', and nothing new is indexed until I restart the search service. I tried rebuilding the search index, and the same thing happened - got so far, then paused & service needs restarting to kick it back into life. I changed to “Automatic” instead of a delayed start, but it stayed on ‘paused’.

Does anybody have an idea to solve this problem?

ShamrockRig · Dec 22, 2021

Hmmm this is weird to me. I use outlook as a work email. Indexing is off. Yet I can search through hundreds of emails and find what I need with indexing off

Rob Devon · Dec 22, 2021

Try the fix I posted yesterday - Microsoft shares fix for broken Outlook search in Windows 11 ... It worked for me.

richstant · Dec 22, 2021

OK, that's good to know. I was going on the basis that when indexing is paused, outlook search doesn't update either. But I guess if you turn it off completely, outlook goes back to it's native search. As regards the 'fix' posted by Rob - as far as I can see, that's just waiting for the indexing to complete. In my case the initial indexing completed fine, and I've tried rebuilding the index, but the problem persists.