Disable Windows Search Indexer

Question

I'd like to know how to proceed in order to permanently disable the Windows Search Indexer in my otherwise fantastic Windows7 OS?

Answer 1

All you should need to do is click the Start button, type Services in the search field, and click the Enter key.  Scroll down and right-click on Windows Search and choose Properties.  Change the Startup type to Disabled which will stop it from running when you reboot your machine.  You can also click the Stop button to stop the service immediately.

Barbara

Answer 2

All you should need to do is click the Start button, type Services in the search field, and click the Enter key.  Scroll down and right-click on Windows Search and choose Properties.  Change the Startup type to Disabled which will stop it from running when you reboot your machine.  You can also click the Stop button to stop the service immediately.

Barbara

Tried that and not stopping.

Details at...

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?p=1784781#post1784781

...using XPro

Answer 3

All you should need to do is click the Start button, type Services in the search field, and click the Enter key.  Scroll down and right-click on Windows Search and choose Properties.  Change the Startup type to Disabled which will stop it from running when you reboot your machine.  You can also click the Stop button to stop the service immediately.

Barbara

But Explorer will still attempt to start the Windows Search service every time you open a folder. If you disable it, it will probably also file a Windows Event Log entry to complain that it couldn’t start it.

What’s needed is a setting to turn the Windows’ Indexer off altogether so that Explorer does not attempt to run it anymore. However, turning Windows Search off in the Windows Features dialog is not good because it disables file searching altogether which is undesirable; we need a way to turn off just the indexer so that Windows behaves like it did in XP (read properly). Unfortunately even deselecting it from the Windows Features dialog doesn’t help because Windows still tries to use it and complains about being unable to.

Answer 4

I have turned the indexing off a few months ago without any ill effects, other than the Start menu Search box results are limited to software and settings now (that's how it works when indexing is off -- we don't have settings to change that).  Because I prefer to decide where I'll search for documents at the time that I do an actual search, and I don't use Libraries, I don't mind that limitation, and I go to a folder and use the Search box in the window at the upper right corner, where searching works as it always did.  I have not noticed any unasked-for attempts to start the indexing happening on its own.           

I'll mention that without indexing on, we can't manually specify new file extensions to enable Search to search the contents of, because Indexing Options is not available when indexing is off, and and that's where Search (unwisely) put those settings.

Answer 5

I have turned the indexing off a few months ago without any ill effects, other than the Start menu Search box results are limited to software and settings now

I hate it when a doctor doesn’t understand or believe that a patient has pain just because there is no blood spurting or bone sticking out. Not all problems are obvious or in your face. Just because Windows isn’t crashing doesn’t mean that Explorer isn’t trying to run the Search/Indexer service every single time you open a folder. Check your Even logs and I wouldn’t be surprised if one of them is full of Couldn’t run Search service entries.