Slow Windoze Vista, Searchindexer.exe

[ProDave]

Mrs PD has a laptop with Windoze Vista.

Yes I know, big mistake, but I'm not inclined to buy a new one, just yet.  It's been a rubbish lappy since it was new.

Anyway, most of the time it works tollerably (as long as you leave it half an hour after boot up to do all the stuff it thinks it has to do)

But once in a while, it virtually grinds to a halt, with the disk activity light stuck on, and the HDD chuntering away like a goodun.

If you have the patience to get windoze task manager up, and go into resource meter, you can see disk activity stuck at 100%

Expand the view, and it's several instances of searchindexer.exe hogging all the disk time.

Go away and leave it and it settles down again.

So the question is What exactly is SearchIndexer.exe?

I'm sure it's an MS program or utility, not malware as I first thought (Malwarebytes or CCleaner don't find anything wrong)

And what can I turn off to stop this dam SearchIndexer.exe hogging my machine?

 

[a3]

The best fix that won't cost your pocket and is 100% workable.  :B-

 

[steptoe]

The best fix that won't cost your pocket and is 100% workable.  :B-

:innocent

I was going to keep out of this one,

but,,,,,

Dave, is there anything specific that your missus really needs windoze for?

 

[NozSpark]

Oh jeez,,, we have a laptop that came with Vista... It now runs XP although it has run Unbutu in the past

 

[Steve3948]

iirc you can turn the search indexer off and the machine will run much faster, from memory its purpose was to enable you to find files quicker when using search in file manager.

 

[ProDave]

Well I've disabled the search indexer, instructions here: http://www.mydigitallife.info/disable-and-turn-off-windows-vista-search-indexer-and-indexing-service/

Yes Vista is carp.  I thought that from the day we got it.  Yes I was stupid when I bought it. I had the choice of buying a lappy with XP or Vista. Thinking Vista was new and therefore must be better, I chose that. I should have read reports on the net first then without a doubt I wish I had chosen XP.

 

[septiclecky]

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/28450/what-is-searchindexer.exe-and-why-is-it-running/

If you can make any sense of this it may help

 

[ProDave]

Clearly the problem is that it's only supposed to run in the background when the system is idling.  But the reality is sometimes, for whatever reason, it just takes over certainly hogging near 100% of the disk access time, making any other application at best run slow, at worst not at all.

Just another typical bug ridden Microsoft application then.

It will be interesting to see if this solves the issue. If so then sadly it could have been solved years ago, and we would never have been criticising this laptop as slow and under powered?

 

[NozSpark]

Theres nothing wrong with the laptop,,,, its the software

 

[OnOff]

Why don't you try Ubuntu via a Live USB and see how she gets on with it (my missus hates Ubuntu I might add).............very resistive to change and trying new things. Yours might be a bit more open minded. Nothing lost. Once she sees how quick it is etc you might convert her!

 

[Sharpend]

Sorry paddler, but if you spoke to my missus like that she'd give you a black eye before you'd finished the second option.

Just ducking and diving!

 

[ProDave]

Put it simply to her

Go and buy a windows laptop yourself with windows on it and never bother me again with ANY windows or computer issues - This option is by far the best option

If I suggested that, then her answer would be take it to a computer shop and PAY someone to fix it.

I hate that 3 letter word.

 

[NozSpark]

That'll be the Scots on you

Well honorary Scots anyhow ; )

 

[ValleyHandyman]

Run msconfig.exe and look at what is in the boot list.

winkey+R then type msconfig.exe - hit enter.

Google each one and review if you need it, many can be disabled to reduce the amount of car being run. (Like anything from adobe.)

Then when you next reboot tell the popup not to tell you again.

If you later find something is not working you can alway re enable it using msconfig.