Indexing Broken in Windows 11 (Painfully Slow At Best)

Anonymous
2021-12-05T01:10:52+00:00

Hello

I have upgraded to Windows 11 Pro on two different laptops, and both have the same issue with indexing. It is painfully slow and then usually resets itself after a couple of weeks.

Both PCs are high-end laptops with Core i9 mobile CPUs (1 x 6 core and the other 8 core). Both run 2 x NVMe 1TB drives. Both have 64GB RAM.

Both run MS Office and I use Outlook for email connected to same IMAP accounts on both. My docs, pics, music and work-related files are all stored on OneDrive and accessed from both PCs (OneDrive is set to keep local copies on both PCs for fast access).

Windows is being asked to index around 250,000 files and 80,000 emails and calendar appts. Windows 10 used to accomplish this task in 6-8 hours max.

Windows 11 takes nearly two days just to index the emails. It can take up to three weeks to index the lot and then some folders simply refuse to be indexed. Then, after a couple more weeks it will eventually lose the lot and indexing has to start from scratch again (on both PCs)

I have tried:

Disabling backoff via registry so indexing never pauses

Only adding one location at a time to let it slowly build up (e.g., add only Outlook and when that finishes add a folder)

Rebuilding the index

Storing the index in different location

Search and Indexing Trouble-shooter

Nothing fixes the issue

Any help appreciated.

Cheers

Mick

Windows for home | Windows 11 | Files, folders, and storage

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  1. Anonymous
    2022-07-09T20:45:23+00:00

    Thank you!

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-05-14T20:10:18+00:00

    Does anyone know what those keys actually do? Can I delete them without rebuilding the index or are they important information for the index?

    Once I had deleted those keys, my index rebuilt to more than 414,000 items in about 12 hours. Acceptable speed.

    However, about 40,000 items were left as "Pending." Those items are slowly being dealt with (a few every few seconds) and that number is slowly going down (by 10,000 in two weeks). However, the number of indexed items is not going up. So it seems like these pending items aren't really needing indexing at all.

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-05-05T10:47:02+00:00

    Yes! I had the same issue, this resolves it. I tried many things and spent 4 or 5 hours with level 1 then level 2 support at microsoft - their answer was 'wait'.

    I just did this, I'm up to 1.15M indexed items (first 1M took 96 hours) and its going around 50-100x the speed it was.

    Thanks!

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-04-06T08:05:42+00:00

    Upgraded from Win 10 Pro on Win 11 Pro in December and regretted almost immediately. I've cleaned old files and cannot downgrade. My job is 20% searching file names AND contents. Searching derogated slowly, not immediately. Outlook searching works almost perfect and fast, but sometimes I am looking in mail with specific word and search does not see it.

    First I had no problem with searching file names but file contents, especially in pdf was not complete, usually some files missed. Now, I have problems with both names and contents: searching contents does not work at all, and searching names works in funny ways. One wouldn't believe what I need to do to: if word is shorter than 6 letters first search for word in file name longer than 6 letters and than go back and search for word.... or open few explorer windows and search, sometimes it works.

    I tried all those methods mentioned previously and have no intention to describe my experience because they ALL failed. Yes, sometime in some combination, something solve the problem, temporarily.

    But, favorite phrase of Microsoft for upgrading since Windows 3.11 has been "to improve your productivity". Well I certainly didn't improve my productivity with upgrading on Win 11. And I do not care if I have 55 new emojis or shadow under windows, or new taskbar color....... I need basic functions to work stable. Please, Microsoft, solve this problem now.

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  5. Anonymous
    2022-03-30T07:08:50+00:00

    10 years my a#% !

    1. I never got any help with windows troubleshooter. it never works!!
    2. I am not supposed to follow some 10 links you posted and do a phd to make a basic feature in windows work!!!!
    3. this is **** up my laptop and will most probably cost me to buy a new one because the CPU ****p

    @windows get your **** together pls

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