Vista Search Engine Completely Non-Functional

Software & Apps
#1

Hi, All,

I’m assuming this is a software issue. I’m asking everyone I can for input.

Sometime in the last two to three weeks something has killed the search functionality in my Vista OS PC. I had pretty much all my initial problems with Vista ironed out and was relatively happy with the result. Now, suddenly, (exact time unknown) something has completely disabled my search engine.
The Start-Menu Search does not initialize. The folder search option does not react when a search object is entered. This is also true for the “advanced” search option, although the initial search screen opens. Entering a search object and clicking the execute button gets no reaction. I tried to use Google to research the problem, but I mostly found links to totally unrelated subjects. I have close to two terabytes of disk space, over 80% full. That is a huge area to cover trying to find something without a usable search engine. I haven’t been terribly impressed with other search software I have used in the past and really want to restore my Vista OS search function. Any help will be very much appreciated.

#2

First off, check for possible malware presence. Then, look in services.msc if indexing and any other related services are enabled/started(automatically). If nothing wrong there, try to run sfc \scannow utility, to repair any system files damaged. Lastly, try a system restore to an earlier restore point
Alternatively, instead of using the notoriously cpu hogging indexing service of windows, try a substitute like Everything indexer from http://www.voidtools.com/faq.php (freeware) or EFS from http://www.sowsoft.com/search.htm (shareware), both with impressing speed and modest cpu requirements.
The moral of your predicament being: allways use some sort of disk-imaging backup solution, regardless of os.

Everything.txt (1.33 KB)

EFS.txt (1.29 KB)