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
    2022-07-01T15:15:55+00:00

    When I say it is a fix by Microsoft. I might have been too generous. What I meant is that it seems like it is a manual fix that Microsoft support, though it's revelation was a long time coming judging by this thread. What MS should do is include a check for a oversized or incorrectly configured HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Search\PluginResourceData key and apply an autofix in the troubleshooting wizard. Like another person, I did once have a well indexed PC, then after an update, suddenly 70.000 things needing indexing. I am hoping that either I do not have that problem or if I do, deleting this key will massively speed up the re-indexing.

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-07-01T06:56:13+00:00

    Hi SimonAJenkins,

    excellent.

    why do you say it's a fix by microsoft? is there a fix?

    In addition, I noticed that the registry key HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Search\PluginResourceData appears from time to time (as example after re-indexing outlook)

    seems that we just have to delete it again from registry it indexing speeds up again.

    like a morning routine to kill this key :-)

    Thank you all for this thread.

    take care

    V

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-06-30T16:59:54+00:00

    Something that worked for me:

    I tried most of these things, apart from the Windows 11 rebuild. I ran procmon.exe and round SearchIndexer.exe was just constantly reading through HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Search\PluginResourceData. I looked in there and there were thousands of entries, compared to much less on a fresh PC.

    So I backed up that key, deleted it, restarted the Windows Search Service, and it has just indexed 20,000 items in under a few minutes ! Before it had done 4 files in 2 hours.

    I am not re-indexing my Outlook again, as that was what was originally slow.

    As always, be careful when deleting or changing things in the registry. But this was the breakthrough for me

    Simon

    Edit: Annoyingly, I never read the last comment above mine, and it is the same solution. Still, I am happy I worked it out for myself, and it is validated as a fix by Microsoft too. Procmon.exe can be the saviour for many issues.

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-06-30T14:57:34+00:00

    Ok Guys,

    after fighting hours and several calls with MS support...... still not working.

    so, after stopping the Windows Search service, I tried to delete the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Search\PluginResourceData.

    then trigerred the index rebuild.and... the time to write this message I am already at 17.000 elements indexed....

    BUT
    just now Windows automatically re-installed an update and the registry went back with PluginResourceData...

    So I disabled automatic update and... same player shoot again.

    seems to work fine for now.

    waiting for the official fix from MS now.

    huge thanks to Aymericn for the tip!!!!!!

    ++

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  5. Anonymous
    2022-06-30T11:23:20+00:00

    Alright, so I took my own advice ...

    I spoke with a rep called Olusoji.

    After going through the usual rigmarole of 'are you being stupid', 'is your computer fast enough' and 'did you try to restart?', we finally got somewhere.

    Here is a quote:

    "I just spoke with the Subject Matter Expert about this issue

    He said this is one of the issue that is being worked on"

    I pressed for info on start date, expected end date, etc., and the response:

    "He said the back end engineers are working on this and likely to be effected on the next Windows update"

    So he then confirmed in July, so while I will not hold my breath, it would appear that there is hope of a fix in July, guys.

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