Force indexing

[jmc777]

Is there a reg hack to force indexing in Vista? I understand the concept of having indexing ease up when I'm doing something, but I'd prefer to brute force it like I could with Windows Desktop Search in XP.

[Brandon Live Veteran]

First thing to note - the indexer in Vista works a bit differently. Unlike the XP version, it will not completely stop indexing because of user activity - it will just slow down a lot. But it should be balanced well enough to always be up-to-date after the initial indexing is complete. And since it uses low-priority I/O (which doesn't exist on XP) it will never interfere with other applications' ability to access the disk.

Still, I recognize the desire here (I actually run the indexer that way on my desktops). Unfortunately there's no option exposed in Vista to do that, though it's being considered for a future update. Technically you can do it via the registry...

Set HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Search\Gathering Manager\DisableBackOff to 1. You will have to take ownership of the Gathering Manager key to alter it. Then restart the service.

(But don't mess with any other values in there, as they aren't meant to be changed and probably won't do what you think)

Edited January 31, 2007 by Brandon Live

[jmc777]

Thanks for the info! :)