Windows Search Service not working after Windows 8.1 Upgrade

Anonymous
2013-11-03T16:40:29+00:00

After upgrading to Windows 8.1, the Windows Search Service is not working. I ran the troubleshooting tool which identified the problem, but was unable to fix it.  Any insights would be much appreciated.

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Search, touch, and mouse

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Anonymous
2014-04-30T23:39:47+00:00

Finally found a solution to this after about 2 weeks of on and off troubleshooting. This was in Windows 8.1. Indexing was not running, all options were grayed out, and no solutions I tried (registry changes, etc) worked.

A few posters suggested going to 2 directories and deleting all the files in those folders:

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Search\Data\Temp\

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Search\Data\Applications\Windows\

However, this solution was initially impossible for me, because the first directory (Temp) and all the files in the 2nd directory (Windows) would DISAPPEAR upon trying to view them. They would be there for a second when I first entered the directory, and then vanish. Since I couldn't get to them, I couldn't delete them. I've never seen files and folders do that before.

I fixed this by renaming the "Windows" folder to "Windows.old," and immediately the system generated a replacement where the files didn't disappear!  I then did the same thing with the "Temp" folder, but this time it didn't auto-generate a new folder, so I just made one myself.

I didn't even have to delete the files in the newly generated folders. Indexing started working immediately after the new folders were created.

Hope this helps someone!

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Anonymous
2013-11-14T21:50:45+00:00

If you are using either Norton Utilities 16 or System Mechanic 12 or maybe some other registry checking/repair program, my experience (on two separate 8.1 systems) is that both NU or SM will stop Windows Search service during their automated registry check/repair routines and will produce an Error 2 missing file message if you try and restart Windows Search service.   You can recover/restart Windows Search service by rolling back/undoing the registry changes made by these utilities using their built-in registry change undo tools.  Once Windows Search starts back up Indexing for Outlook deleted e-mails or other programs/folders will also restart but may take a while to rebuild depending on how much is indexed.  To avoid having this issue in the future, you should disable the automatic registry check routines on all registry check programs you may have running, at least until all this gets resolved.

Microsoft has apparently made some changes to Windows 8.1 that aren't compatible with how Norton and Iolo do their registry check routines, and so far the latter's engineers have not released updates to either program which prevents this issue from happening.  None of these issues existed for me with Windows 8.0, 7 or prior Windows versions.

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  1. Anonymous
    2013-11-14T23:59:39+00:00

    I've seen that thread but my restore wasn't far enough back to make a difference. Some have reported that they had neither program and still had the search issues. Not a simple issue it seems in all cases.

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-11-15T00:18:46+00:00

    I don't use either Norton Utilities 16 or System Mechanic 12 on this PC, the simple fact of the matter is that Windows Search worked fine under Windows 8, but is not working under 8.1. At this stage I will probably have to revert back to Windows 8, but what is even more annoying is that Microsoft have not brought out a fix for what is a major issue in my book. However before I revert back to Windows 8 can anybody tell me how I go about adding an 'Index Location' under 'Advanced' in 'Indexing Options', I presume that this is done through the registry?

    Thanks, Niall.

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-11-15T01:20:17+00:00

    I see this is still a issue with a lot of people :(  .  In my first post, I hope it helped someone out. :) now onto this Windows search problem.  windows search is located in "C:\Windows\system32\SearchIndexer.exe /Embedding" what is really funny is the word EMBEDDING.

       If you go to control panel and VIEW by: Category  change to large icons you will find the INDEXING Options. when opened you will and should find under the INDEX these locations:  Internet explorer history local disk (C:) and offline files.  but with this problem you might see nothing at all , and no way to change this. 

       I am leaning towards a database or INDEXING that ( and I am going to take a stab at this) that if you had windows live movie , email or windows live Photo Gallery, photo gallery would be a very big database or indexing over the entire pc ! and when that got removed or was suppose to release it's grip on the pc to give full rights to windows 8.1 new and improved (SEARCH) this didn't happen as planned. leaving you with a broken search and broken search setting to be modified to your liking.

      If someone could please open up regedit and ( please do not change anything )  and follow this path.

          HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\RunMRU

    in the right pane are 3 keys ( don't change anything) just post back what key:  a  and MRUlist  say under the data tab.

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