In Shared Services Administration, whenever I try to look at anything like the crawl log, the content sources, the default content access account etc I always get the same error which is "the gatherer is shutting down". How do I clear this condition? It's fortunately on a single server Sharepoint system with no users yet but even rebooting the system doesn't clear this.Thanks,Steve.

Did you ever find a resolution for this? I recently took a backup server and reprovisioned it to be part of a fresh standalone server farm using the Sharepoint Products and Technologies Wizard. However, when I try to start the Office Sharepoint Search service on the server, I get the gatherer is shutting down error, as well. I've seen blogs about some cases where people had permissions issues with the search service account, but this isn't the case since I'm using an admin account for the search service account. I'm thinking that the previous search index became corrupt some where along the line... There must be a way to clear the index out and get it so that the gatherer service is no longer in the shutting down state or something! I may have to just give up and rebuild the server. Frustrating!

Beyond all logic, I actually came to a solution for my specific issue!! Before describing what did the fix for me, I'll show what errors I was getting in my logs since it is somewhat different from Megatransect's issue with memory being corrupt. Clearly there are numerous reasons for getting this error. It has to do with account permissions or because the osearch (Office Server Search) service is having issues: Links to some other suggestions and info: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepointsearch/thread/cd1f7862-69f7-4270-bb44-b98f1e24da3e http://faizal-comeacross.blogspot.com/2009/04/search-setting-error-gatherer-is.html http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263445(office.12).aspx Application Log: Event ID 5000 EventType ulsexception12, P1 w3wp.exe, P2 6.0.3790.3959, P3 45d6968e, P4 microsoft.office.server.search, P5 12.0.4518.0, P6 45439dcc, P7 656, P8 193, P9 comexception, P10 837w. Two Error Lines in 12 hive Logs directory: 08/11/2010 13:15:24.74 w3wp.exe (0x1334) 0x1660 Search Server Common MS Search Administration 0 High The call to SearchServiceInstance.Provision (server '[SERVERNAME]') failed. Setting back to previous status 'Disabled'. System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException (0x80040D23): The gatherer is shutting down. at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.MSSITLB.IGatherManagerAdmin3.get_Servers() at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.Gatherer.ProvisionGlobalProperties() at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.Gatherer.Provision() at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchServiceInstance.Provision() at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchAdminUtils.DeployCredentials(SearchServiceInstance localSearchServiceInstance, Boolean deployOnlyLocalInstance) 08/11/2010 13:15:24.77 w3wp.exe (0x1334) 0x1660 Office Server Office Server General 837w Exception Unhandled page level exception. Path: /_admin/SearchServiceInstanceSettings.aspx, Error: The gatherer is shutting down. , Details: System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException (0x80040D23): The gatherer is shutting down. at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchAdminUtils.DeployCredentials(SearchServiceInstance localSearchServiceInstance, Boolean deployOnlyLocalInstance) at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Internal.UI.SearchServiceInstanceSettings.OnClickOK(Object sender, EventArgs e) at System.Web.UI.WebControls.Button.OnClick(EventArgs e) at System.Web.UI.WebControls.Button.RaisePostBackEvent(String eventArgument) at System.Web.UI.WebControls.Button.System.Web.UI.IPostBackEventHandler.RaisePostBackEvent(String eventArgument) at System.Web.UI.Page.Rai... I was using a single account to handle all the MOSS2007 account requirements. I figured it had admin privileges so it should be able to do everything. However, for some reason when reconfiguring a fresh farm on a system that had hosted a farm before, reusing this single account didn't work for the osearch or spsearch. I had even tried uninstalling MOSS2007 and reinstalling it and rerunning the Products and Technology wizard on this system. I still got the gatherer is shutting down when trying to configure search on the "Services On This Server" Central Admin page. I finally decided to create another admin account and try using that for the search services. Went to Central Admin -> Operations -> Services on Serer -> Office Sharepoint Server Search. Filled in the form with the new account, and it finally started working! Some helpful commands in troubleshooting this issue: Command Line tool to stop and uninstall Office Sharepoint Server Search on your system: (I wasn't able to stop the service from Central Admin because it showed up as stopped in Central Admin, but the service actually launched in the background. Running this command stopped the service completely and uninstalled indexing from the server.) stsadm -o osearch -action stop Command Line tool to configure osearch (-defaultindexlocation is optional, but you can use it to change the index location): stsadm -o osearch -action start -role IndexQuery -farmcontactemail [youremail] -farmserviceaccount [DOMAIN\name] -farmservicepassword [password] -defaultindexlocation [NewDefaultLocationForIndex] The Default location for index is C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\12.0\Data\Office Server\Applications. Changing the location didn't help me, though. I still go the gatherer is shutting down error after doing that. I had to change the account used for some reason. That was what allowed me to start up a NEW osearch and spsearch index on the server. Hope this helps someone out there. This one caused me many hours of pain!