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
    2022-02-26T12:53:03+00:00

    It seems that this workaround is not working any more :(

    I did it ca. 2 months ago, everything was fine until yesterday, when indexing went mad again. So I did the steps again.

    After the installation, indexing started fast, but after ca. 10 hours it was still working and got painfully slow.

    I stopped indexing and pushed 'rebuild' with only drive 'C' selected. Again, it started fast, but after a few hours it got very slow. I do not think it will ever finish, not speaking about indexing the rest of my drives as well as Outlook.

    Btw, in the indexed locations menu, there are two items I cannot remove: 'DesktopBackgound' and 'Start Menu' (see picture attached). It was the same before, but now I have the feeling that maybe theese have also something to do with the indexing issue. Is it the same for everyone or you can empty the list completely?

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-02-26T13:28:02+00:00

    Same here. We switched to Filelocator Pro. Which is lightning fast and works quite well with Outlook.

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-02-26T19:48:20+00:00

    I removed all entries from "Index these locations", and added initially a single "Microsoft Outlook".

    It quickly indexed my mail with lots of PDF attachments (I have a PDF filter installed.

    Then I added drive C: and a couple of archive drives.

    I never saw there "DesktopBackground" or "Start Menu".

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-02-26T22:13:27+00:00

    I managed to remove these folders 'DesktopBackgound' and 'Start Menu' from indexing locations (they were among hidden folders), so now I have theoretically no locations set for indexing. Despite this fact, Windows keeps indexing! I tried stopping and then restarting indexing from Services, but it does not help. The system is continuoisly indexing despite no location ia being set! It suggests that this issue has nothing to do with Outlook, but the whole indexing service is broken, it is basically a piece of sht. Very, very disappointing!

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  5. Anonymous
    2022-03-11T00:46:47+00:00

    Hi Everyone,

    There has been a little gap in responses. I too faced this issue, to the point that my search/index was "classic" and index limited to the computer user profiles only. Credit to mikeyjames1967 and I note that some of you attempted his solution versus the reinstall option?

    My case W11 upgrade from W10, all normal until a couple of weeks ago when indexing became "ALWAYS" indexing and CPU was 30% all the time as reported by you folks!

    I did the usual - triggered a rebuild - it took more than 3 days for 92K files! I actually turned off "C" drive content indexing. I excluded almost everything thinking "content" was searching .zip and self extracting .exe. Next I reduced and reduced the folders indexed. Even suspended real time file scanning of AV. No improvement.

    As an example I happened to installed an update to a program already installed and for all intents and purposes already excluded in all of the preset indexing locations; BOOM 5000+ files to index, at a paces of approx. 1 per minute! Mad!!

    I looked again at the advice from mikeyjames1967 and had another go. As I write I am 11200 of 72000 files indexed after 4 hours - pretty good with content indexing. Relate this though to the previous 3 days which was the time line it previously took for reindex option!.

    This is the procedure and additions to mikeyjames1967 response on page 2:

    STOP indexing "Windows Search" service either manually and DISABLE Startup

    1. issue from elevated command prompt sc stop "wsearch" && sc config "wsearch" start=disabled

    or uses Services.msc to locate Windows Search and STOP and DISABLE START of same

    1. If you do not DISABLE search, then the index engine will keep restarting as a child dependency of another service
    2. Once disabled you can fully delete C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Search*data* folder - the data folder will be rebuilt - you will need to acknowledge and use Administrative Privilege. IF YOU DO NOT disable the Windows Search service, you will NEVER delete the full content of this folder as it will be partially locked. Problems will continue!

    Once this is done you can follow mikeyjames1967 and but please carefully watch the spelling of featurename in 1. and SearchEngine-Client-Package, in 3. of his advice - some corrections to the original post. I did a restart after 1., BUT because I had disabled the Windows Index service, Powershell did not demand a restart. (If Windows Search is running, a restart must be done as on previous trials/tests I had not stopped the Windows search services, so I encountered a mandatory restart). I recommend a restart between steps 1. and 3. BUT STOP and DISABLE Windows Indexing in Services First

    1. As Admin launch PowerShell and issue: dism.exe /online /disable-feature /featurename=SearchEngine-Client-Package (reboot might be required), but recommend reboot anyway
    2. via Services.msc STOP AND DISABLE "Windows Search" (if not already done) and then delete the "data" folder under C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Search. Admin privilege is required. If needed and this step is not already done from advice above, then recommend restart again
    3. As Admin launch PowerShell and issue: dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename=SearchEngine-Client-Package (no reboot required).

    Good luck - this reply took me 30 mins or so, and my index is now 12,500 items

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