Turn Off and Disable Search Indexing Service in Windows XP
Search indexing service scans through files and folders on the XP system and records information about them in index files in order to speed out the searching speed. For users with low end PC, slow computer, or seldom use XP’s built-in Windows search facility, it’s possible to disable and turn off search indexing to speed up system speed by freeing up CPU and memory which used to perform the indexing task, with the drawback of slower search speeds.
In Windows XP, it’s possible to turn off indexing of some or all hard disk drive (HDD) one by one or to disable indexing service altogether (which will turn off indexing on all drives). Searching is still possible after disabling of indexing, albeit more slowly.
Turn off indexing on particular hard disk drive
- Open up “My Computer”. Or open “Windows Explorer” and then expand Computer tree.
- Right click on the hard drive to disable indexing (i.e (C:) drive letter).
- Select Properties on the contextual menu.
- Click on General tab if it’s not already selected.
- Untick (unselect) the check box for Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching option.
- Click OK, and wait for the index removal process to complete, which may take a few minutes.
- Repeat the steps for other hard drives if applicable.
Disable the Indexing Service in Windows XP
- Open “Control Panel”, select “Administrator Tools”, and open Services applet. Alternatively, type services.msc in the Rn text box from Start menu, and then hit Enter.
- Scroll down and locate Indexing Service service, and then double click on it.
- Click on Stop button to immediately stop the indexing service if the service status shows “Running.
- Under the “Startup Type”, select Disabled to permanently disable the indexing service so that it won’t run again.
- Click OK.
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September 22nd, 2007 16:30
[...] Jei norite išjungti indeksavimą tik atskiriems diskams, instrukciją, kaip tai padaryti, rasite My Digital Life įraše. [...]
November 5th, 2007 02:28
Thanks man!
Saved my laptop
November 22nd, 2007 17:17
After the service deactivation, it is also possible to remove the old “Search Indexing Data”?
I have this question because I saw that my folder “C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Search” has a size of 900MB!!
Thanks
May 28th, 2008 21:07
Hi,
You can simply find this file and delete it: Windows.edb
located here normally : C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Search\Data\Applications\Windows
Also right click in this directory location once you deleted the file select New -> Text Document call it (Windows.edb) the same name including the .edb as the extension.
First you may also have to disable the option to hide extensions of know file types, you can do this from the same open explorer window. This can be found by selecting from the menu ‘Tools’ -> ‘Folder Options…’ select the ‘View’ tab. Find the option “hide extensions of know file types” and make sure the tick box is empty (untick).
This will recreate the index file as empty and should not cause any errors AND free up that loverly Hard Drive space you wanted to get back from windows. My search index file is almost 3 gigs with 500,000 files indexed and this worked perfectly for me.
Hydro Man
June 16th, 2008 20:55
I cannot find a search folder C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\
A search also does not find the windows.edb file?
I use WIndows XP version 200 with SP 2
September 19th, 2008 07:37
You need to enable viewing of hidden folders. open your my computer to go the menu Tools -> Folder Options, scroll down till you see hide hidden folders make sure its not ticked. similarly with show hidden system files make sure that is ticked.
Don’t forget to set this back to the original settings unless so you dont mess with your system files accidently.
Happy computing
HydroMan
November 16th, 2008 12:16
Nice.. I got a DELL XPS Gen2 with a 2.34GB Windows.edb file.
Thanks.