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
    2022-07-04T05:57:13+00:00

    Also, just want to confirm are you deleting the entire PluginResourceData key + subkeys? or just deleting the subkeys of PluginResourceData?

    And if its only deleting the subkeys of PluginResourceData, how do I do it without having to delete them one at a time?

    Thanks!

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-07-04T05:38:06+00:00

    I have a related issue where the number of "pending" files to be index just fluctuates around 1100, goes down then goes back up, back and forth. Does anyone have an idea on why this might be happening?

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-07-03T20:43:04+00:00

    I deleted the entries under that registry key several weeks ago and didn't notice any difference to anything else, except indexing started happening at high speed. I looked at it again about a week ago and a huge number of entries had reappeared under that key. I deleted them all again with no apparent ill effects. But I haven't found any clues as to what they do ... ?

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-07-03T19:48:08+00:00

    I personally haven't had any issues personally, though I did back up the entire key first with Regedit. From once having waiting 1 hour for 4 files to be indexed, and having had Windows Search taking 10% of my CPU for months, I was so happy that 80,000 PC and Outlook files were indexed in minutes.

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  5. Anonymous
    2022-07-03T02:48:40+00:00

    Are there any downsides to deleting the keys under PluginResourceData? Does anyone know what these keys do?

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