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Windows Server 2016 search service hell

kapitan dimitri 6 Reputation points
2021-02-05T21:18:49.24+00:00

I'm having a very aggravating problem with windows search server service, happening with MULTIPLE customers, and so far, happening with Server 2012 R2 and Server 2016.

What we have is the windows search service running, with content indexing, and it is indexing a network share folder with files such as word, pdf, txt, etc.

It works fine when it works, the content indexing is fine, but the PROBLEM is that it stops working routinely. I have to RESTART the search service almost daily to fix it. This is a major pain. When it stops working, there are no indication it stops working. The only indication is when someone makes a search, results come up but they are blank. You cannot double click the file, and there is no content info about the file, etc. It ONLY gets fixed by restarting the search service.

I've already done a ton of troubleshooting and rebuilt indexes, and so on and nothing has work. It keeps breaking. Cannot find anything online about this. This seems like a Microsoft server bug that no one knows about, with no solution.

Halp?

Windows for business | Windows Server | User experience | Other

6 answers

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  1. Anonymous
    2021-02-05T21:28:35+00:00

    A couple of options are to report this as feedback over here on uservoice.
    https://windowsserver.uservoice.com/forums/295047-general-feedback

    or also start a case here with product support.
    https://support.serviceshub.microsoft.com/supportforbusiness

    A card is required to secure the support contract but confirmed bug support is always free.

    --please don't forget to Accept as answer if the reply is helpful--

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  2. cheong00 3,486 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2021-05-13T06:10:35.713+00:00

    Try search in Event Viewer to see if there is any indication that the index service is stopped.

    If yes, you can try create a task with "event trigger" for that event in task scheduler to (re)start the service.

  3. cheong00 3,486 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2021-05-17T02:35:59.34+00:00

    Also check if the tips from Redmond Magazine helps.

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  4. Mike Russo 16 Reputation points
    2021-11-15T21:20:43.783+00:00

    I haven't seen this issue specifically just yet (sounds horrible) but I have seen issues where it will just silently not return results, and you really have no idea you've got to rebuild the whole index (or turn off/turn on indexing bit for those affected files/folders and restart service) until a user shows you how horribly broken it is. I wish there was at least some way to know it was broken. But Microsoft just doesn't seem interested in fixing these bugs. Does anyone have experience with Copernic for Business or any other search engine replacements? Are they pretty-much drop-in replacements that can be used via the Explorer search on mapped network drives?

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  5. mcbsys 126 Reputation points
    2022-09-12T20:51:05.953+00:00

    I started seeing this issue on one of my Windows Server 2016 Essentials machines a couple months ago. Glad to find out I'm not alone. Don't understand what could cause it. Low resources? Blogged here:

    https://www.mcbsys.com/blog/2022/08/windows-search-shows-plain-results-on-entire-network/

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