J
Jay Libove
Guest
Trying again from my previous threads:
Windows 10 desktop search is very slow, but Powershell queries of the Index is fast
After hard drive replacement, Windows 10 desktop Search very slow
Summary:
On just one machine (out of several, by far my most powerful machine), all Windows 10 Pro 64-bit, all v1909, all with the same Microsoft Office 365 user associated, all with the same OneDrive for Business set of folders linked, searches run from the Windows Start Menu (click Start and begin typing) or Windows Start Bar Search box/ Cortana Search box (any of these search methods, it doesn't matter which), the SearchIndexer.exe process pegs all available CPU (Xeon E3, 4 hyperthreaded 3.8GHz cores, 8 threads total) for 15-90 seconds before returning results.
Directly querying the Windows Search Index using a PowerShell script returns results instantly.
This problem on this one machine persists even after a complete clean reinstall of Windows that I performed about six weeks ago, some months into the problem. Yet it can't be the hardware of the machine that is the problem, because 1. nothing else runs slowly on this very fast machine, and 2. this same machine in the same configuration had instant search performance before I-don't-know-what changed due probably to Microsoft around the end of CY2019/ beginning of CY2020. It's also not a basic "asking to do too much", as see above it worked fine before with the same amount of data, and my smaller/slower systems perform fine.
I have opened several threads in Microsoft forums, spent dozens of hours in emails and on tech support calls with various Microsoft support departments and teams around the world, and come up empty. (I'm so furious with Microsoft "support" for working the problem to a certain point, promising to get back to me, and then dropping it forever - no more phone calls, no more emails, no replies to my follow-up "Where are we?" contacts; mis-routed cases, heavy-handed "must repeat first-level diagnostic steps" scripts, etc). And this impacts my work every. single. day. as I rely heavily on search.
Please Microsoft DON'T tell me to run the troubleshooter, disable startup services, boot into safe mode, check for updates, run SFC and DISM, nor any of those other typical responses. I've done them all. Repeatedly. See above - fresh clean reinstall of Windows, and problem returns.
What is needed is to capture a debug log of what SearchIndexer.exe is being asked to do by the graphic user interface for submitting search queries through the Start Menu/ Start Bar/ Cortana search box. Once upon a time when I was designing enterprise systems and writing software (on UNIX) this was the sort of thing that I'd have eaten for breakfast. But I've never programmed on Windows and it's been decades anyway, so I can't.
Microsoft, are you willing to finally do the right thing?
Or, maybe, someone out there who likes a rare, meaty technical bug, and will take a real or virtual beer from me in thanks if we solve it, who can dive right in to diagnostic logging, process tracing, etc, to see what's really wrong?
thanks in advance, frustratedly-yours,
-Jay Libove, CISSP, CIPP/US, CIPT, CISM(retired)
Barcelona, Spain
(English/ Español/ Català)
More...
Windows 10 desktop search is very slow, but Powershell queries of the Index is fast
After hard drive replacement, Windows 10 desktop Search very slow
Summary:
On just one machine (out of several, by far my most powerful machine), all Windows 10 Pro 64-bit, all v1909, all with the same Microsoft Office 365 user associated, all with the same OneDrive for Business set of folders linked, searches run from the Windows Start Menu (click Start and begin typing) or Windows Start Bar Search box/ Cortana Search box (any of these search methods, it doesn't matter which), the SearchIndexer.exe process pegs all available CPU (Xeon E3, 4 hyperthreaded 3.8GHz cores, 8 threads total) for 15-90 seconds before returning results.
Directly querying the Windows Search Index using a PowerShell script returns results instantly.
This problem on this one machine persists even after a complete clean reinstall of Windows that I performed about six weeks ago, some months into the problem. Yet it can't be the hardware of the machine that is the problem, because 1. nothing else runs slowly on this very fast machine, and 2. this same machine in the same configuration had instant search performance before I-don't-know-what changed due probably to Microsoft around the end of CY2019/ beginning of CY2020. It's also not a basic "asking to do too much", as see above it worked fine before with the same amount of data, and my smaller/slower systems perform fine.
I have opened several threads in Microsoft forums, spent dozens of hours in emails and on tech support calls with various Microsoft support departments and teams around the world, and come up empty. (I'm so furious with Microsoft "support" for working the problem to a certain point, promising to get back to me, and then dropping it forever - no more phone calls, no more emails, no replies to my follow-up "Where are we?" contacts; mis-routed cases, heavy-handed "must repeat first-level diagnostic steps" scripts, etc). And this impacts my work every. single. day. as I rely heavily on search.
Please Microsoft DON'T tell me to run the troubleshooter, disable startup services, boot into safe mode, check for updates, run SFC and DISM, nor any of those other typical responses. I've done them all. Repeatedly. See above - fresh clean reinstall of Windows, and problem returns.
What is needed is to capture a debug log of what SearchIndexer.exe is being asked to do by the graphic user interface for submitting search queries through the Start Menu/ Start Bar/ Cortana search box. Once upon a time when I was designing enterprise systems and writing software (on UNIX) this was the sort of thing that I'd have eaten for breakfast. But I've never programmed on Windows and it's been decades anyway, so I can't.
Microsoft, are you willing to finally do the right thing?
Or, maybe, someone out there who likes a rare, meaty technical bug, and will take a real or virtual beer from me in thanks if we solve it, who can dive right in to diagnostic logging, process tracing, etc, to see what's really wrong?
thanks in advance, frustratedly-yours,
-Jay Libove, CISSP, CIPP/US, CIPT, CISM(retired)
Barcelona, Spain
(English/ Español/ Català)
More...