Make Vista build search index faster?

I've seen a bunch of complaints on here about Vista building its search index slowing down the computer... but I'm having the opposite problem! Vista is building the index at a snail's pace. I asked it to rebuild the index about a day ago... and under Indexing Options it now says "36 items indexed. Indexing speed reduced due to user activity."

I assume an "item" is basically a file, right? I have thousands of files I want it to index. I checked the locations it's set up to index and it looks right. Is there a way to make it step on the gas pedal a little bit?

 

ok, never mind, I think I fixed it.

In Control Panel > Sys & Maintenance > Power Options, I changed the setting for Search & Indexing from "Balanced" to "High Peerformance". It now has 270 items indexed... so that's more in the last few minutes than in a whole day on balanced mode.

 

Why no one replied is cause no one even uses Vista inbuilt iindex.. it slows down comp making dual-core run like celerons

 

Actually, after first turning it off because of recommendations (and the guide) on this forum, I decided to give it a shot anyway.

I find that the indexer really only bogs the system down during the initial indexing phase (which could take anywhere from hours to days depending on how many folders you've asked it to include on the internal and assorted external drives, and whether you give it time to run on its own for a while during this time period, which is obviously a lot faster as it doesn't have to "reduce speed due to user activity") - after that it only seems to run sporadically now and then, and what I've gained in usefulness and search speed has been well worth that. I usually use the search features several times a day in large folders and love the instant results.

I find that some of those "lean and mean" Vista tweaks are actually somewhat counter productive on computers used mostly for desktop work rather than gaming systems.

 

Funny... I figured it was because I answered my own question 7 minutes after asking it.

I agree with everything you wrote, Miths. Once I fixed the power management setting, even with the "reduced speed due to user activity", it only took a few hours to index my 7500 files. Now that it's indexed everything, it doesn't slow anything down in any noticeable way anymore... and it's a very useful feature.

 

Good advice. Everyone want's to "tweak" the system so they can feel 31337, but they really have no idea what they are doing. "Hey, let me turn off all the new things that Vista has, then complain that Vista has nothing new!"

 

Only the folks who don't dig into the issue a bit to find out that this slow down only occurs as Vista initially creates the index are the ones who have disabled indexing. Those of us who took the time to actually find out how it works and what it REALLY does are happily using it.

Gary

 

Can I get an "AMEN", brothers and sisters!

Gary

 

lol nocturnal pwned. orev has such a point ima quote it everytime someone whines about vista.

31337 tweakers turn everything off coz its 'useless' then white about OMG useless xD

 

the New is Old ... That piece of technology was available much before Vista released.... you can't really ask 'whats new about Vista' ... all is copied from different sources & even copying someone takes some efforts.

 

How is it right to turn off indexing in Vista? through the conrol panel> system&maintenance>parameters of indexing OR my comp.> disk c, local disk> right click>uncheck indexing box ?
or should i do both steps?

 

was what i did

dont u want to try it on (leaving it alone) for urself under vista first and see?

cheers ...

 

qhn, i've tried it, but i really don't need it.

 

Software developers have been ripping and copying other developers' good (and sometimes not so good) ideas for a couple of decades - at least.
While you can rightfully criticize their lack of original ideas, and you're certainly right in saying that they shouldn't get credit for the invention, but it can only really benefit us end users if they steal as many useful features as possible .

Sure, there are also numerous tasks where I would rather rely on 3rd party tools than something built into the OS, but I can't really say that indexed search is necessarily one of them.

 

Maybe I should just go back to MS-DOS then... since everything past that is a copy of something. Oh no, wait... DOS is a ripoff of CP/M... darn.

Sure, I could've gotten desktop search, widgets, firewall, antispyware, photo program, calendar, snipping tool, etc. somewhere else... but I like the fact that my Vista came with them. In time if I don't like a few of them, I'll replace them.

I also like how desktop search integrates with Explorer in Vista. I ran Google desktop on XP for a while, and didn't like it that much. I don't think it was quite as well integrated... but the larger reason I didn't like it much is that it mysteriously wouldn't find things sometimes even though they were there. I don't know if this will work better for me over the long run... I'll see.

If you decide you want to shut it off, the process for doing so is described in the Vista Tweaks sticky thread in this forum.

I agree. I don't see a performance hit now that it's done indexing my files, so as long as the searching works right (and it seems to from my limited testing so far), I'll be happy.