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Resetting the Windows Search per-user index

Brent_Bishop's avatar
Brent_Bishop
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
May 11, 2022

Single-user and multi-users OSs:

 

  • In the latest Windows code, set the following location in the registry to 0

    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Search\SetupCompletedSuccessfully(DWord)

    Doing so will trigger Windows Search Indexer to cleanup obsolete artifacts and rebuild a new user catalog for the particular user. On the latest Windows releases (expected on 1809 and above, but subject to change) that has this feature, the registry key above is set to 1 after a catalog is successfully created. An absence of this registry key may indicate that the Windows version is older and lacks this newer feature.

  • If this key is missing, then it may still be possible to trigger a rebuild by deleting the following folder: C:\Users\<Username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Search\Data\Applications

     

NOTE: It is intended, but not yet validated, to keep the SetupCompletedSuccessfully registry key value change (as noted above) to serve this particular purpose for future versionsHowever, please note that the steps above are for troubleshooting/debugging purposes only (especially the second option for legacy behavior). We reserve the right to change this behavior at any time as necessary.

 

Note: for database size the following as values to use for estimates. Significant deviation from these values will typically be something to investigate.

  • Usually, 10-20K per indexed item would be estimated for database size.
  • For Outlook only data, use the higher side (20k) since they are pure text rich content.
Updated May 11, 2022
Version 1.0
  • If you are roaming your profile (and even if you are not) you can reset the user's Windows OS search index [which indexes the files on the system as well as Outlook messages and possibly other things of which I am not aware]. So basically, if a user's search index seems to be corrupted then you can do this and let it rebuild and if it works then it was corruption. If it doesn't, then there are other issues to be investigated and a ticket should be opened. This is a fairly easy and non-destructive method. It doesn't delete any of the users work files, just the index. And if the index wasn't working already, then there is nothing at all to lose.

     

    This only applies if the per-user index is being used which is available (by default) on Server 2019 and above as well as Win 10 and 11 multi-user OSs. You can also use the per-user index on Win 10 and 11 as per this post (https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/fslogix-blog/fslogix-single-user-os-search-roaming/ba-p/3346787).

  • vara93's avatar
    vara93
    Iron Contributor

    Hello. Can you explain in more detail what this is and what it is for?

  • vara93's avatar
    vara93
    Iron Contributor

    Brent_Bishop hi.

     

    We often find that a virtual machine starts to run slowly (RDS 2019). There are no errors in the logs. When the user ends his session, he is told that the windows search service is running.

    Can this help me ?

  • Jeconiah_Masuwa's avatar
    Jeconiah_Masuwa
    Copper Contributor

    i have a search problem too, when typing a file name to search, it is showing indexing off and I dont have or cant find my windows search option  in services