Indexing Broken in Windows 11 (Painfully Slow At Best)

I was getting desperate, so tried deleting the PluginResourceData key (and its zillion-and-one sub-keys).

Wow, what a difference ...

• it had taken about 8 hours to index 7,000 items
• it has now indexed a further 25,000 in about 10 minutes

What other implications are there to deleting the PluginResourceData key?

Hi Everyone,

There has been a little gap in responses. I too faced this issue, to the point that my search/index was "classic" and index limited to the computer user profiles only. Credit to mikeyjames1967 and I note that some of you attempted his solution versus the reinstall option?

My case W11 upgrade from W10, all normal until a couple of weeks ago when indexing became "ALWAYS" indexing and CPU was 30% all the time as reported by you folks!

I did the usual - triggered a rebuild - it took more than 3 days for 92K files! I actually turned off "C" drive content indexing. I excluded almost everything thinking "content" was searching .zip and self extracting .exe. Next I reduced and reduced the folders indexed. Even suspended real time file scanning of AV. No improvement.

As an example I happened to installed an update to a program already installed and for all intents and purposes already excluded in all of the preset indexing locations; BOOM 5000+ files to index, at a paces of approx. 1 per minute! Mad!!

I looked again at the advice from mikeyjames1967 and had another go. As I write I am 11200 of 72000 files indexed after 4 hours - pretty good with content indexing. Relate this though to the previous 3 days which was the time line it previously took for reindex option!.

This is the procedure and additions to mikeyjames1967 response on page 2:

STOP indexing "Windows Search" service either manually and DISABLE Startup

1. issue from elevated command prompt sc stop "wsearch" && sc config "wsearch" start=disabled

or uses Services.msc to locate Windows Search and STOP and DISABLE START of same

2. If you do not DISABLE search, then the index engine will keep restarting as a child dependency of another service
3. Once disabled you can fully delete C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Search*data* folder - the data folder will be rebuilt - you will need to acknowledge and use Administrative Privilege. IF YOU DO NOT disable the Windows Search service, you will NEVER delete the full content of this folder as it will be partially locked. Problems will continue!

Once this is done you can follow mikeyjames1967 and but please carefully watch the spelling of featurename in 1. and SearchEngine-Client-Package, in 3. of his advice - some corrections to the original post. I did a restart after 1., BUT because I had disabled the Windows Index service, Powershell did not demand a restart. (If Windows Search is running, a restart must be done as on previous trials/tests I had not stopped the Windows search services, so I encountered a mandatory restart). I recommend a restart between steps 1. and 3. BUT STOP and DISABLE Windows Indexing in Services First

1. As Admin launch PowerShell and issue: dism.exe /online /disable-feature /featurename=SearchEngine-Client-Package (reboot might be required), but recommend reboot anyway
2. via Services.msc STOP AND DISABLE "Windows Search" (if not already done) and then delete the "data" folder under C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Search. Admin privilege is required. If needed and this step is not already done from advice above, then recommend restart again
3. As Admin launch PowerShell and issue: dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename=SearchEngine-Client-Package (no reboot required).

Good luck - this reply took me 30 mins or so, and my index is now 12,500 items

Yes, I found a solution

1. Create Windows 11 Installation Media on USB - Download Windows 11 (microsoft.com)
2. Click on setup.exe from the USB
3. Do an install keeping apps and files.

When the install was finished indexing worked great.

One thing I did before the install was to remove all the indexing locations (until "index these locations" is empty) and the click 'rebuild'. I did this to clear any previous indexing information. I have no idea whether this actually does anything but if you want to ensure you do exactly what I did maybe do this as well.

Since then, the PC has been fine. It indexed all of my emails and files in 4-5 hours.

Hi Mikey!

I have the same issue, indexing is damn slow after Windows 11 update. Many thanks for posting this solution. I am looking forward to trying this.

I have spent a lot of time installing, setting and fine-tuning everything in Windows, therefore I am a bit worried doing the installation procedure you mentioned. Therefore, can you please specify what will be kept and what will be lost after this? It is clear that installed apps and personal files will not change, but what is the case, for example, with Windows settings (such as, keyboard layout, date/time format settings, appearance settings, etc.) as well as settings of different apps, such as Outlook? (I have done a lot of fine-tuning in Outlook.) Will they stay?

This information would be highly appraciated.

Thanks,

Sandor

I had the same problem. I also reinstalled Windows 11 while keeping apps & data and this fixed my problem.

HOWEVER this is only temporary. As soon as you reboot or I think after a few days it will revert back to the "bugged" state like it was before (slow indexing and 10% cpu usage for the indexing service). I reinstalled W11 twice now and the problem returned after a few days.

It's very weird because when I got it finally fixed there was almost no CPU usage at all and "Search Protocol Host" took up the most % of the CPU when idle (like 4% maybe?). Now this process is not taking any amount of CPU but instead the "Windows Search Indexer" process/"Windows Search" service which takes up about 9% usage all the time.

I gave up and just disabled indexing and use Everything to search files.

i have the same issue with a laptop, do you find a solution yet?