Indexing speed slows to a crawl after Windows October 2018 update

PMac10000 · 10 May 2019

I rely heavily on the Windows 10 search/index feature on a daily basis. Prior to the most recent Windows update, rebuilding a new index never took more than a few hours tops... I have a few 100K items to index, including multiple large Outlook pst archives. But no big deal till recently... Indexing and search was relatively quick, reliable, and thorough.

Since 1809 update however, the index speed has slowed to a crawl. It's been about 5 days now, and the PC has been on (mostly) 24/7 since then... and the index re-build that happens with a Windows update is still going. Up to about 120K items now. To be fair, I deleted and re-built the index a few times along the way because it appeared to be hung or not moving at all... but I seem to be indexing about 50K items a day at best, which is at least a 10x speed decrease from before.

Everything else is fine after the update, and no other processes are stressing the system. I've disabled the "backoff on user activity" index option already, so index runs all the time. On the bright side, the (partial) search results work great, and the preview function for Outlook emails (which was lost about 5 years ago...) is back! But that's small consolation until this indexing speed issue is fixed.

Appreciate any help in advance.

dalchina · 10 May 2019

Hi, 1809's not a problem in this respect normally as far as I know.

As indexing 'backs off' when your PC is not 'idle', please have a look at your task manager and post any screenshots of interest, organising the relevant column from high to low by clicking on the column header.

If there is significant CPU use after more than, say, 3 mins after you've logged in, there's some other problem.

Also from an admin command or Powershell prompt please run this
chkdsk C: /scan
for each disk/partition indexed
and post the summary result.

If nothing is apparent after that, try reducing what's indexed in Indexing Options, until indexing completes satisfactorily. If you can identify something being indexed as being problematic, you might have more of a clue.

PMac10000 · 10 May 2019

I can post the screenshots if you wish, but I can tell you that there is no significant CPU usage or rogue processes. CPU usage tends to be in the 1-2% range, with Task Manager at the top of the list (or process monitor, when I'm monitoring the indexing). chkdsk has also been run on C: and all is clean.

I also thought that a particular file might be hanging the indexing. so I am periodically using Procmon to monitor and filter on SearchProtocolHost processes. There was no one culprit. I can see various filetypes and folders (all limited to my username folder) at various times. The Outlook pst files are around 1GB or so, and take the longest time (the items indexed counter doesn't move at all, for a long time), but ultimately the index moves on to some other files and it continues to increment. Just VERY slowly.

I am hesitant to rebuild a new index, since it is taking days and I need the search capability for my work. Even the partial results I am getting from ~ 120K items is essential to my productivity. I am hoping that I will finish the complete indexing over the weekend. Computer works fine otherwise, but this crippled search thing is really bizarre...