Indexing Broken in Windows 11 (Painfully Slow At Best)

Hi Ivan,

If you restart the Windows Search service or the computer then it will recreate the keys.

Some people are reporting this is fixed now, but I dont see it.

Yeah, I can confirm that the PluginResourceData is now back in the registry, along with lots of subfolders. However the indexing still seems to be working well. 113,963 items indexed since deleting the registry folder yesterday.

I also installed the July 2022 Windows 11 Updates (KB5015882) today. I now have the "Show Search Highlights" switch in the "Search Permissions" settings. My computer is Azure AD joined and I'm logged in with my Azure AD/Office 365 account. I now see my company's org chart in the search menu, as well as search results from SharePoint Online.

I have tried all the ideas in here (troubleshoot, reinstall win 11, delete reg key, checked update mentioned above & was replaced by KB5016629). My initial issue of new Outlook emails not being found is now replaced by 'indexing is paused' after hitting rebuild. It pauses again immediately after restarting windows search in services.

Even though it says indexing is paused the items indexed is actually creeping up very slowly but I'm at 46,000 indexed & outlook shows 121,000 still to be indexed.

I have had this problems since swapping to a newer laptop which does everything else at a decent pace, using all the same software (office 2016).

Microsoft has ignored this problem as it likely only affects a few users.

I think i know why.

I moved my index folder. It appears that win 11 does not exclude its new location and should. If you run the index troubleshooter, admin troubleshooter, there are entries to read. One shows you location followed by /search/data. e.g. C:/location/search/data.

Copy it.

Go to settings>privacy and security>searching windows>add and excluded folder button>paste the location of your index data.

If you think about it. An index that indexes itself will take longer and longer and eventually slow to a crawl. Its like one of those infinite mirrors. I index a file. I index the index of that file. I index the index of the index of that file.

It looks like I've done 45000 in about an hour but it is stopped again.

I hope this helps.

I've thought I had it before.

I compacted all my pst files

It appears shutting down the windows service with the stop button doesn't work because stop is still there but it says it in not running. To restart (because its greyed out) right click and then use all restart.

Restarting the computer should restart indexing?

stopped again excluded the entire index subdirectory.

still hoping it starts moving again.

Good Luck

other win issues

Win 11 is a gutted version of win 10. Can't move the taskbar to the top forcing you to autohide which conflicts with controls in powerpoint or to give up a piece of precious vertical real estate permanently.

With the taskbar hidden at the top it overlaps the header which is hardly ever used for program control.

The pop out scroll bar in settings doesn't expand unless you're on the center of the thin one which means it doesnt expand if you are to the right of the center such as all the way right on the screen. Another gutted function.

I've left my prior responses below in case it helps.

I've left my prior response below and could write a lot more of all of the things I tried.

Here is the result.

Under System>Storage>Cleanup I found an entry to remove old operating system files (the entry is gone now).

Machine restarted indexing but it now running at 1000 every 30 seconds. Item count has dropped to a few hundred thousand so it should finish in less than a day.

I also checked all the language menu items including options. It seemed to take a while to load english is installed the first time.

Now 1:03 for 1000
Now 1:25 for 1000

I do have email open and indexing does slow down when you are doing other things (like writing this update).

Still it looks like I'll be done in hours not days or weeks or never.

I have screen off never and cpu off never. Use powerpoint slideshow with a black screen if you worry about burn in.

I have turned turbo boost back on in bios (turned off to prevent laptop overheating while charging battery). I'll turn it back off when I'm done.

I am using a laptop cooler (boosts CPU speed even at light loads).

Indexer process is now running at 5% cpu where its been below 1% for the week of torture to get here.

And the message is still backwards. it says paused but the counters are incrementing/decrementing.

Use settings>privacy and security>searching windows

to see the indexed and pending counters

Note one entry has must be plugged in for initial index

Open outlook as that search is also indexed (pending will increase).

If this works for you maybe send a $1.00 to the red cross for hurricane IAN relief.

My prior post and prior update are below.

Good Luck Jim...

DRKHRSE

However I did find a way to get some closure on this mess.

The youtube video (link below) points you to a settings screen which includes both an indexed and pending counter.

It has a toggle for ignore power settings. Mine was already defaulted to off.

So you can see how much there is left and that defines how long the torture will last.

Note both indexing counters (indexing options or settings screen) advance when it says it is paused.

It is unclear how broken the software is. Could be the message, could be worse.

It clearly is way too slow.

I'm using the recommendations from the video.

I suspect classic versus enhanced means nothing because it was on "classic" but indexing is choking on files I would assume are my pst files?

I was defaulted to classic. I don't know if this is why I couldn't search in outlook. I am following the video choosing enhanced.

Someone posted the indexing options box with "complete" and only 4000 items (gave me a chuckle).

I won't see that for days I suspect.

At least you can keep track of progress and aren't wonderig how many billions of files win 11 added.

One thing I disagree with in the video is using taskbar and restarting Wsearch.

If you restart windows search using services.msc from admin command prompt (right click to run as admin) then you see a shutdown progress window appear. That would imply to me that it is a safer way to do restart indexing. Note indexing is probably not stopped (the paused message is always there). CPU usage in taskbar shows indexing processes use almost no CPU. That is why it takes forever. Miscrosoft should fix it and ensure it can use a larger percentage of CPU. I would suggest a limit of 50% scaling down to 5% based on what percentage of indexed versus remaining (fast to begin with and then reducing to a baseline background level).

My impression is that Microsoft has lost the abililty to control priority inversiona and is now in panic mode so they are putting out an operating system where everything is defaulted to its minimum possible CPU usage.

link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwcQFGQHEoU

While I'm here microsoft hard coded the taskbar to the bottom of the screen. The registry fix to put it up top got overwritten on the second or third Win 11 update. Microsoft should be aware the razor this scroll bar on the right side's bottom arrow is almost perfectly at the bottom which also triggers the hidden taskbar. It is annoying as hell not to be able to put the taskbar at the top. The scroll down arrow is under the header so there is no similar conflict at the top of the screen. This is why so many people are complaining. This should be fixed immediately.

I've nicknamed the condition of forever indexing as "Magoo'd" as in Mr. Magoo because he couldn't find anything either.

Update:

I just opened outlook and the pending jumped. It looks like you need to leave outlook open to get email indexed?

I did move my index and made sure the new subdir name had no spaces (it s quirk naming excel macros and i don't trust windows).

I'd leave the settings screen active. Just a hunch but mostly just for peace of mind (my cpu fans are running now so maybe more than a hunch).

I noticed that using a laptop cooler raises my CPU speed from 50 to 80 percent even at such a low CPU usage. Also gives peace of mind when you set plugged in power settings as never never.

(win 11 download put CPU at 80% and nearly melted the laptop. Why I own a laptop cooler)

Good Luck

Knowing is half the battle...

DRKHRSE

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

Hey all!
I had a similar problem but a bit different - my indexing is resetting after each PC shutdown. It is so annoying...just imagine being unable to browse your files on all drives...

Did anyone had a similar issue and found a fix?