Windows

Dec 26, 2008

My Digital Life Editorial Team

7 Comments

Delicious

Resume or Restart Windows Vista Indexing Service After Pausing

Tweet

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.

Related posts:

1. Turn Off and Disable Search Indexing Service in Windows XP
2. Disable and Turn Off Windows Vista Search Indexer and Indexing Service
3. Disable Windows XP and Vista from Asking for Password to Unlock on Wake Up Resume from Sleep/Standby
4. How to Terminate or Stop and Restart Explorer.exe Shell in Windows XP and Vista Cleanly and Gracefully Without Reboot PC
5. Restart or Shutdown Windows (XP, 2000 and Vista) from Command Line or One-Click Shortcut

7 Comments

• 
  Henderz August 31, 2011 at 1:15 am

  All you need to do is to reduce the activitiy of the computer to resume.

  Reply
• 
  Deano December 8, 2010 at 9:38 pm

  Really, this is one of the stupidest things I have seen from Microsoft. Logic = resume after pause. Really really and they haven't even rectified it in Windows7!

  Thanks for the article.

  Reply
• 
  Marianne December 7, 2009 at 10:45 am

  Thanks so much for this fix! Works beautifully!

  Reply
• 
  vgergo November 28, 2009 at 1:35 am

  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.

  Reply
• 
  E Webber October 6, 2009 at 9:39 am

  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.

  Reply
• 
  David March 27, 2009 at 2:52 pm

  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.

  Reply
• 
  hello December 27, 2008 at 5:28 am

  vista sidebar gadget:
  http://brandontools.com/files/folders/sidebar_gad…

  Reply