Cannot start Windows Search service

I noticed Windows Search indexing was stopped and tried to restart its service, but when I attempt to do it, I get this error message:

Code:

Windows Search Error 2:The system cannot find the file specified

It's stuck at "Starting" and is set to Automatic (Delayed Start), which is the default preference I believe. When I click on Searching on Windows entry in Settings>Search, it freezes for a while and then closes. From what I've researched, this issue seems to be caused by registry cleaning utilities, which is not the case as I don't have this kind of software installed.

SFC reports no errors, and I've also already renamed HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Search\FileChangeClientConfigs to <regkey name>.old and rebooted, but it didn't work. I just don't know what else to try, it was working fine just two days ago and I neither messed with Windows Search service and nor used any utility to wipe invalid registry keys, as the key mentioned seems to be intact.

Right-click on Windows Search in the Services list and click on the Dependencies tab.

Make sure that the Services listed in the This service depends on the following system components section are running.

Thanks for the reply, but I managed to find the solution: setting SetupCompletedSuccessfully DWORD to 0 and then rebooting. However, now I gotta another issue, in this case, the search indexing constantly gets paused by itself, even if I choose to rebuild the index. I'll create another thread to ask for help and mark this one as solved.