Search indexing is taking a remarkably long time.

Hey pgeee

Thanks for this update. I had given up... I just checked my indexing status and was astounded to see "Indexing complete", and the indexing process is not eating up CPU cycles all day. I'd love to see some documentation from Microsoft to say that they addressed this issue. I am tempted to start the indexing process over from scratch to see if it is really reliable... but at this point I'm going to check to see if it is truly "complete" and not missing newer emails, etc. The kind of things that Windows Search couldn't find previously, because of this problem. Glad I had notifications turned on for this thread!

After further examination, the problem hasn't gone away. The indexer has gone back to indexing all the time, and I don't really see any progress in the number of items indexed. Even during the short period when "indexing complete", I don't believe it was complete... for example, many "new" emails within the last few days did not appear in the search results.

I am tempted to start over from scratch to see what happens, but really don't want to go through it again...

Yes, Event ID 10023 still occurring every 8 minutes. Most of my search activity is in large, archived pst files which represent 6 month histories of my Outlook e-mails. These pst files are typically 1-1.5GB ea, and go back about 15 years (!) or so. As I mentioned, Windows Search always indexed these files without issue, up until a Windows update earlier this year. I could remove the Outlook files from the search parameters, but that would defeat my purposes and I'd have to re-index...

so a few responses back I was ecstatic because I had a windows update via the regular channel, and my indexing actually ended up complete not long after. BUT, due to a corporate policy I recently had to totally refresh the pc with a new WIndows 10 installation. And guess what, the problem is back. Indexing stuck, event 10023 every 8 minutes on the Gatherer. Am going to try installing the PDF ifilter but I did that last time to no avail. crossed fingers. Either way there's enough evidence and corroboration in this trail to show that Microsoft are selling software for which a key function (search) does not work for some users.

thanks dalchina, it's all sound advice, I did perform massive elimination the last time this happened, thinning the file types down to hardly anything. I repaired all my outlook files etc. But a proper root cause isolation method would be to know the what file is causing the 10023 error. If only one could get a report out of the 10023 that said what file the indexer was playing with when it got stuck. I don't believe there is. seems silly we have very generic warnings, errors, events etc and no debug method to drill down to what caused them. Anyway, i will try the latest pdf ifilter first. if that is no good i'll just have to live with doing searches in google gmail web client and such cumbersome alternative. will report back on how I go

So I tried a few experiments with the infamous event 10023. They were numerous and laborious. I did discover a few things however
a) the event 10023 is definitely what holds up indexing completing as I was able to correlate repeatedly slow indexing where the event occured. I suspect that whatever trips the event, then causes windows search to wait up to 8 minutes before a retry
b) By starting with small folders I did see that eventually they would complete indexing. it's as if the event is a hurdle for windows search but not a brick wall.
c) I was able to index folders which on previous attempts seemed stuck with repeated event 10023s , memory issue?
d) I proved that I could index pdfs, ( i have the ifilter), msg files, and all the other extensions I regularly use, by indexing one folder with a few examples of such files therein
e) I eventually removed all file types from widows search except the absolute bare minimum. That's a lot of clicks
f) did a memory check
g) i started indexing folders one by one without outlook being indexed. this is when it got weird, the events had stopped. Was it the memory check, was it because I was drip feeding folders into search, no idea, but here's the sequence of events which most recently were enacted which I think made a difference
1. absolute minimum file extensions
2. remove all folders from windows search except desktop
3. memory check at reboot
4. add high level folders one by one which you want in your index, let them index , then add the next one when indexing complete message received
5 add outlook last (scanpst all outlook files first and repair)

i'm not going to touch it again now, given it's proved fragile. But I will say this. For me I don't think it's anything to do with particular file types, or the content of files. It's some other variable, windows, memory, not sure.

Hope this helps any poor souls suffering the same malady