I have deselected and reselected folders several times rebuilding the index. I have never seen more than 220 items indexed. Even with the C: drive selected to index everything, I only get 216 items indexed. Now with the normal configuration it indexes only 182 items. I have tried several iterations with the registry following suggestions to no avail. I have used the "Troubleshoot search and indexing" many times but it does not find any problems. How do I reset the indexer so the search utility works?

Okay, I've been working on this for 5 1/2 hours. There went my sunny Sunday. I enabled the Guest User. Indexing does not run at all there. It locks up on "Waiting to receive indexing status." I logged into services as an administrator, stopped and restarted the service. There are no locations selected to be indexed and all options are grayed out. Also, this is a brand new Dell Latitude E5500 laptop with Windows 7. No upgrades, and no messing around. I just powered it up and indexing doesn't work fresh out of the box. I'm done for the day (maybe). Any suggestions would be great! Until I get this cleared up I'll use search assistant from the XP Virtual Machine. That little doggy works great. Indexing doesn't work at all.

Hi, I would like to suggest you disable antivirus program and test the issue in Clean Boot. If it does not work, please also run System File Checker. Regards,Arthur Li - MSFT

I disabled McAfee, and performed a clean boot. No change. I disabled Windows Search and Indexing Service and rebooted; Clean Boot. I re-enabled Windows Search and Indexing Service and rebooted again. Indexing started up. It indexed 181 items and stopped. It says "Indexing Complete" Windows Search does not find anything since almost nothing is indexed. I've run SFC several times. It doesn't find anything wrong. In Indexing Options I've run "Troubleshoot search and indexing" dozens of times. It doesn't find anything wrong. Do you know how to uninstall the Indexing Service and re-install it. I can't find any help on the web.

Hi, This time, I would like to suggest you backup the original WSearch registry and import the new registry to repair the Windows Search service. WSearch registry for Windows 7 x86 WSearch registry for Windows 7 x64 If it does not work, please also disable Indexing Service in Windows Features if it is enabled. Regards,Arthur Li - MSFT

Arthur; Thank you for the suggestions. I decided to reformat and reinstall everything from scratch. I did that with help from Dell. It will take another couple of days to get everything loaded again, but right now it is running fast, the indexing service found over 24,000 items, and searches are working. So I think this is a closed issue. I was unable to fix the problem. I must have had a corrupt system file somewhere that the file checker could not find. Mike

I would create system restore points as you add software to make sure you can recover if any of the added programs causes the issue.

I started backing off with restore points then decided to try uninstalling things. McAfee anti-virus is the problem. It prevents the Indexing Service from functioning. After uninstalling McAfee I rebuilt the index and everything appears to be working fine. I'll load MicroSoft Security Essentials for now. Thank you all for all your help.

Thanks Mike.MC. I had the same problem. I uninstalled McAfee and everything is fine now with indexing. Iguess I will switch to MicroSoft Security Essentials as well.I hope that it is as safe as McAfee.