Rebuilding the Search Index in Windows Vista

If you are encountering problems with the searching engine built into Windows Vista, your best bet is to tell the indexing service to completely rebuild the index. It will take a while to rebuild, but it’s usually worth it.

It’s important to note that the search indexing in Windows Vista also handles searching in Microsoft Outlook 2007, so if you are encountering errors there you have another troubleshooting step other than disabling instant search.

Type in indexing into the start menu search box to launch Indexing Options:

Once the dialog opens, you’ll want to choose the “Advanced” button, which will give you a UAC prompt.

Now you can simply click the Rebuild button, and the search index will be wiped clean and regenerated.

This process does take a long time if you have many files being indexed, so you might want to consider trimming down the indexed locations.

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This article was originally written on 11/21/07 Tagged with: Managing Files and Folders, Windows Vista

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Comments (5)

1. November 21, 2007 3:59 pm
   Zath

   Many thanks for this! I’ve been having problems with bringing results back when I search ever since I stopped indexing and then turned it back on again, but now I’ll try re-building it and see how I get on.

   Cheers!

2. December 1, 2007 8:36 am
   mimo

   Thank you for this tip!!!
   After this, my computer it’s so faster, and now I can work better.

3. June 27, 2008 7:03 am
   Leiko

   Im getting a message every 10 minutes saying my indexing isnt working, and when i open the window theres nothing on the included or exclude columns and the advanced button is grey. Any tip?

4. April 27, 2009 9:26 am
   Rose

   I am unable to get this window indexing options to open at all, even in safe mode, any suggestions?? I am having many issues getting programs to open at all after a recovery operation :0(

5. September 14, 2009 11:23 pm
   Sean

   I have a question about indexing. When I search for a file (that i know the name of) i keep getting no results to pop up in that start menu window. BUT the second i hit the “see more results” button, bam, it shows exactly what i was looking for. i have the location these files are at included in the index… i just dont understand why it would say there are no results until i hit “see more results”. what makes this even stranger is when i have my external hdd plugged in (which i also have indexed) and do a search for one of these files, the file on the host machine AND the backup i have on the external show up together.