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
    2022-04-21T20:09:54+00:00

    this worked for me, you change the registry and force it to run faster and not pause. https://office-watch.com/2022/force-windows-indexing-to-run-faster/

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-04-22T09:42:35+00:00

    For me, it is not about speed, I have cca 250.000 files and one day index rebuild. The problem is that it does not work at all from Windows explorer, not file names not file contents - docx, xslx, doc, xls, pdf...... Only my Outlook.pst file is searchable, from Outlook, fast and precise, as it should be. I cannot switch back to Win 10 on this notebook so I've just bought a new notebook with Win 10 and will transfer everything this weekend. Cannot wait Microsoft.

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-04-25T10:13:41+00:00

    I had the same issue.

    After trying everything, I used Procmon and saw that HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Search\PluginResourceData was read continuously...

    I decided to stop Search service (before disable the restart) and delete this key

    Then after the restart, the speed has dramaticly increased, to return to a normal way !

    Not sure about the impact of this change but in case of doubt, you can save regitry settings before.

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-04-25T11:26:00+00:00

    See also Find more shapes and stencils (microsoft.com)

    Last section say : Currently (early 2022) shape search not working correctly on Windows 11. Following is a fix you can apply to your computer that repairs this problem. 

    1. Open the Services app. In the alphabetical list of services, find Windows Search.
    2. In the Properties window, on the General tab, change the Startup type to Manual. Select OK.
    3. In the alphabetical list, right-click Windows Search and select Stop.
    4. Open registry editor (regedit.exe).
    5. In the tree view on the left, navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Search\PluginResourceData
    6. Add a new DWORD (32-bit) key named: ShutoffThreshold
    7. Double-click the ShutoffThresholdelement to edit it. Set Value data to ffffffff, then select OK.

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  5. Anonymous
    2022-04-25T12:44:08+00:00

    Its also important to reset the PenaltyBox-Value to 0. Not only for the Visio-iFilter but for PDF-iFilter and Office-iFilters, too.

    After you do this, indexing works again. Of course, just deleting the whole PluginResourceData-key might do the trick, too.

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