Question Search won’t work

[punkncat]

Dell Optiplex 7010 with i7 3770, 16GB RAM, Windows 10 20H2 iirc on an SSD. System is seemingly running fine in every way except that search will not locate anything. Was working fine a few days ago, no update or hardware change in between. I have tried rebuilding the directory twice so far. Biggest issue is that we need to be able to locate things in Dropbox. Can search manually but in the search box returns nothing useful from anywhere.

I recall having this issue before but cannot remember what I did to fix it.

 

[Colif]

Try rebuilding your search index - https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/58569-rebuild-search-index-windows-10-a.html

 

[punkncat]

Try rebuilding your search index - https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/58569-rebuild-search-index-windows-10-a.html

Yup. As above, I have done this twice already. Not seeming to do anything. I get a quick dialog saying it’s going to do so and take a long time, then closes. I see nothing else indicating anything is actually being done. I am not sure what it’s called in task manager to look for the running process.

I ran it over night the first time. Ram it during the day yesterday. I just set it to run again.
Anything else I can look at?

 

[Colif]

wow, i read 1st sentence and missed 2nd.

not sure this will help
right click start button
choose powershell (admin)
type SFC /scannow and press enter
once its completed, copy/paste this command into same window:

Repair-WindowsImage -Online -RestoreHealth
and press enter

SFC fixes system files, second command cleans image files, re run SFC if it failed to fix all files and restart PC

tried the search & indexing troubleshooter?
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/tr...ell-experience/fix-problems-in-windows-search

 

[punkncat]

I will try SFC here in a bit when we can have the machine down.

The troubleshooter finds nothing to troubleshoot.

 

[Colif]

Microsoft link shows more ways to try to fix it

 

[punkncat]

Ran SFC and it found and repaired a few issues.
I found the monitoring for the indexing service and see it is still working along. The troubleshooter told me that the search function is disabled/not working while that is in process. I will wait for it again and see what it does.

Thanks for the assistance so far.

 

[punkncat]

Set the computer not to turn off over the weekend in an attempt to allow it to rebuild the directory. There was nothing saying it has done x of x files on the screen that was left up on Friday. Search still does not work correctly.

I have no idea what changed between one day to the other last week, but really need to get this working, and hopefully without a full reinstall. Such a PITA.

 

[Colif]

did you get a windows update in that time? it could be a problem caused by a bug fix which will now need another bug fix to fix... a windows update messed up my shutdown in December, the January updates fixed it again. i had contemplated fixing it but I too didn't want to reinstall windows for such a small thing.

 

[punkncat]

The plot thickens, as it were.

The computer was working fine within a day or so of updating to 20H2. The issues started on a Wed of last week, so I suppose it could have been an update. I opted to bring the computer home and do some further checking after an issue today caused the computer to BSOD and was unable to find the boot device. I was able to get it to reboot after going into BIOS and looking at devices/storage.

Upon bringing it home I ran Crystal Mark and it came back that the older SanDisk SSD being used was showing 72% Good health. I opted to change it out to a known good Samsung 850 EVO SSD (which shows 99% health). I performed a clean install, updated to 1909, installed all my programs. Everything seems to be working fine...EXCEPT that in spite of this, search is still not working correctly.
I went to check and it shows that indexing service is running again. It says that due to user activity it is running slower than normal......

Ugg.

Not sure where to go from here. I can only imagine something on the hardware level must not be working properly. At a loss.
Should I be considering budget on a replacement build?

 

[punkncat]

what a journey...

As above, swapped the old SSD over to the new Samsung. Install Windows to it. As it's doing the restart/setup, and after removing the USB, I reconnected the secondary HDD which is one partition containing only Dropbox and shared files.
I mention above that even after the reinstall the search function would not work and it kept wanting to index files throwing a message about user activity slowing it down.
I opted to remove the secondary HDD after moving all the DB data to the SSD, and see if it would perform better without the hard disk. To be clear, there is ONE partition to the HDD, all storage, no reserved or other partitions.
When I remove that drive, Windows refuses to boot.

I put the old failing SSD back in, will boot. If I put in the Samsung (new) SSD it pops up that there is no boot device. If go into BIOS, it's there. If I swap it to a different SATA it is there. If I run the cooked in Dell troubleshoot program everything passes. It shows clear boot path, good structure, but won't boot alone. The moment that I plug the HDD back in, boot.

As an aside I got it to finish an indexing run after the install last night and search now works. (yay) However, before I get too excited about that aspect...I am on 1909. About to update on up to 20H2 and see if it breaks again.

 

[Colif]

it normally helps to install win 10 with only 1 drive in PC as it likes to share itself around
put the samsung in and the hdd
go into disk management and show me a screen shot of all columns in top and bottom areas (need to upload to an image site and show link here)
my guess is the hdd partition is marked as system drive - this means boot partition

even though there is just 1 partition. Windows, if its MBR, doesn't need a separate boot partition, you can make it all one partition. I had it like that on my last PC. Only restriction with mbr is the boot partition needs to be 1st on disk, and if its only got 1 partition, it does that.

note 2nd partition on C above later created by a windows update, originally it was all 1 partition.

if it is marked system drive, there are ways to create a boot partition on new SSD but if its brand new, easier option is just unplug power from all other drives and reinstall win 10. It might even use GPT instead of MBR.

Otherwise, i wonder where your search index is - this shows how to change but it can be used to just find it - https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/59016-change-search-index-location-windows-10-a.html#:~:text=The search index data files,locations as the index location.
as I would have thought that be on the ssd, not on hdd.

have you run chkdsk on the hdd recently? what make/model is the drive? Might help to check its health.

 

[punkncat]

I will get that for you here in a bit. I have it rebuilding the directory, again.

I note that it does say "system" in spite of being one partition. Guessing that my timing was too soon on plugging it back in.
I disconnected this drive prior to the swap because I couldn't get the SSD out with the power cable connected. Left the case open while confirming that Windows was seeing the new disk, used advanced options to delete and have it set up on unallocated and the other HDD wasn't plugged in/present.
After the initial run through it will restart and you can remove the USB (installer) drive. It restarts a time or two shortly after that as it's installing drivers and during one of those I plugged the power back in and pushed the drives into the slot so I could put the side cover back on.

 

[Colif]

curious what it looks like.

How installer works
It runs off a ram drive when you put USB in
It runs diskpart and creates 4 partitions.
it then restarts, and runs off ssd and I had always assumed it had already created the boot partition at this stage, as its not running off the USB so it has to boot from something...

so at some stage it swapped from the boot partition on C to the hdd, mid install... without breaking the installer, which is the odd thing to me. if you swapped it at 2nd restart, its possible it rewrote the info on the boot partition to point at the installer.

What is 1st item in your BIOS boot order?? I bet its the hdd. That might have played a part in the mess up.

You reconnected the hdd too fast

 

[Colif]

So I wonder how long you been booting off a hdd when you had a ssd, as you should notice a speed difference at boot if you use the ssd.

You can break parts attaching things inside pc while PC is on. Not exactly safe. PC might be restarting but its not off for long.

 

[punkncat]

Boot time is relatively quick, not like loading from a HDD. The SSD installed is showing (2) partitions IIRC one is the main system drive and the other is system reserved and small.
The HDD is formatted as one big storage pool and is named that. It doesn't show the "diagonal lines" and in description says system, among other things there in disk manager.

Thank you

 

[Colif]

is the System reserved partition marked as system? the partition with System or EFI System partition in the brackets is the boot partition for the PC.
this is what mine looks like

screenshots would help

if you have fast startup turned on, it can make hdd boot seem faster than it is as well.

 

[punkncat]

Yes, apologies....it's a work box that I HAD to get back up and running in some fashion as quickly as possible. Then had to play catch up on my own work that got behind and this is not "my" station. I keep wanting to take the screenshot even for my own edification. I am going to endeavor to get this tomorrow if it isn't a too crazy day....we are in the middle of Coca Cola inspections and crunching hard, lol.

 

[Colif]

its your question, no need to apologise. If you can't get it, and you don't have the machine anymore, it is to remain a mystery. It isn't really your problem to fix. Give it to IT at work and tell them... they probably don't care as it still works, mostly. It could be none of the machines have a working search lol

 

[punkncat]

its your question, no need to apologise. If you can't get it, and you don't have the machine anymore, it is to remain a mystery. It isn't really your problem to fix. Give it to IT at work and tell them... they probably don't care as it still works, mostly. It could be none of the machines have a working search lol

I am "IT", lol.

This is our remote/new office location that we are utilizing. Primary concern was theft which we have luckily not had issue with yet. This is the location that I put that smashed laptop back together and glued it on a VESA mount to the back of a TV. This particular box was purchased from one of our customers (a refurbisher) back in '17 and was equipped with the 3rd gen i3. Rather than spend a bunch of money on a system to be stolen, I swapped in the i7 3770, a matched set of 16GB Samsung RAM, and had previously added the SanDisk SSD that failed and was at least a portion of this issue.

At this point I am interested in what you pointed out for my own education and hopefully not to have to go through this again if any of it was my mistake.

In the meantime I have been given a $400 budget and am looking at building a 10100 or 10400 based machine, if cheap motherboards would stay in stock it would already be on the way. That machine will go to the primary location that (this one) is in now, and will likely use it to replace the smashed laptop.

 

[punkncat]

@Colif

https://ibb.co/HHQtkSz

 

[Colif]

boots off E drive System & Active partition both mark it as where Bios looks to boot C.

one day you will want to fix that.

i still not sure why that messes with search though. It shouldn't even care where the boot partition is.

 

[punkncat]

boots off E drive System & Active partition both mark it as where Bios looks to boot C.

one day you will want to fix that.

i still not sure why that messes with search though. It shouldn't even care where the boot partition is.

As above I have no idea how it could even have done this. This disk wasn't part of the Windows install before, and was unplugged up until a couple of the first restarts. Strange.

 

[Colif]

It appears that maybe windows writes the location of its boot partition after the stage you attached hdd. Its not ideal to plug hdd into a live PC, you can damage the drives. unless they hot swappable. So its not something I had come across before. We both learned a lesson, you need to let windows finish installing before attaching any other drives, or anything can happen