Resume or Restart Windows Vista Indexing Service After Pausing

Windows Vista indexing service (Windows Search SearchIndexer.exe) is a process that scans and creates a database record of files and folders on the system in order to improve the speed of search operation. When WSearch indexing is running, it will unavoidable has read and write access to hard disk, causing slowdown in computing performance.

Although Windows Vista indexing speed will automatically reduced due to heavy user activity, many people opt to pause or disable the indexing service temporarily. One common option is pausing the indexing process by clicking on “Pause” button in “Indexing Options” dialog window. When pausing, the status for indexing service is “Indexing is paused”, with “Pause” button disabled or grayed out.

However, there is no unpause, resume or continue button to restart or resume the indexing process. In order to resume indexing from pausing, the workaround is to either restart the computer, or restart the Windows Search (WSearch) service. To restart the Windows Server (SearchIndexer.exe) that performs that indexing job, go to “Control Panel” -> “Administrative Tools” -> “Services”. Locate “Windows Search” and click on “Restart Service” button.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 26th, 2008 at 2:13 am and is filed under Operating Systems. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to “Resume or Restart Windows Vista Indexing Service After Pausing”

  1. Marianne
    December 7th, 2009 02:45
    5

    Thanks so much for this fix! Works beautifully!

  2. vgergo
    November 27th, 2009 17:35
    4

    In Windows 7 help: “…you can pause indexing for 15 minutes at a time”. It’s grayed out, because it will automatically resume after 15 minutes.

  3. E Webber
    October 6th, 2009 01:39
    3

    This is quite the oversight on Microsoft’s part. Why on Earth would they not add a ‘Resume’ button when you click ‘Pause’? That is just silly. Thanks for sharing the fix, as I never reboot this machine, so it would remain paused for a quite a long time if I didn’t find this posting.

  4. David
    March 27th, 2009 06:52
    2

    1) Doesn’t apply to my problem. Indexing is paused, but Windows Search Service reports it is “Started.”
    2) Please check your English. “When WSearch indexing is running, it will unavoidable has read and write access to hard disk, causing slowdown in computing performance” does not make sense. It should read, “When WSearch indexing is running, it will unavoidably cause read and write access to hard disk, causing slowdown in computing performance” or something like that. Thanks for trying, though.

  5. hello
    December 26th, 2008 21:28
    1

    vista sidebar gadget:
    http://brandontools.com/files/folders/sidebar_gadgets/entry511.aspx

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