Tech Support Me

Got this error the other day repeatedly at bootup so I thought I would share the fix with you

Microsoft Windows Search Indexer stopped working and was closed
A problem caused the application to stop working correctly. Windows will notify you if a solution is available.

So I went into services and disabled it (and I had to also disable the automatic retry separately or it kept starting despite being “disabled”). Any attempt to manually start it there gives me:

Windows could not start the Windows Search service on Local Computer.

Error 1067: The process terminated unexpectedly.

The fix is to delete all files related to search indexing, located by default at:

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Search\Data\Applications\Windows

and:

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Search\Data\Temp

Note that these are both system directories – You can access it without changing your folder options, just type the shortcut to the folders in the address bar of windows explorer. Or if you want to show hidden folders, you go into Control Panel, (make sure you’re in classic view) and you click on the icon labeled Folder Options, at which point you go into the View tab, there is a sub-folder about halfway down entitled Hidden Files and Folders, click the button next to Show Hidden Files and Folders.

Delete all files and folders in these directories.

Then, change the service back to starting automatically. You still can’t start the service until you reboot, at which time Windows will rebuild the index for you.