Widnows: Disable Search Index

The Microsoft Windows search index is a handy tool. It gives you indexing, search results, and property caching for Emails, files and other types of files. It’s s service that maintains an index of your files for faster searching. It’s evident that if you ever need to search for something you can always count on this tool, but do you actually ever use it?

If you’re looking to boost your computer’s performance, turning off indexing is another way you can do that. Turning this feature off or making any changes is not going to damage your computer in any way. So, you can try and see if things are easier without it if not, you can always turn it back on.

Only Add Specific Locations

If you just allow the indexing for specific locations, that is going to help speed up your computer’s performance. To access the indexing options click on the search icon and type indexing options.

Click on the option to open it and once you’re in the indexing options select the Modify button at the bottom left-hand corner.

You should now be in indexing locations, now, choose the folder you want the files to be saved in or uncheck the ones you want to exclude. To make programs easier to open, I would recommend that you add the Start menu to your options.

Thanks to this change, your Windows computer will only look for files in locations such as My Pictures, Downloads, Etc. It will just look for the files in places where you actually search for files.

Only Exclude a Certain Drive

If all that you want to do is leave out a particular drive, first, you’ll need to open My computer. When it’s open, right-click on it and click on the local drive such as D, C and so on. Select Properties. When the new window appears, make sure you’re on the General tab.

At the very bottom, you should see an option that says ¨Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties¨. Uncheck this box and when you do another popup window will appear.

Select all files and subfolders and click OK. The changes will not be applied instantly and you’ll need to wait a few minutes before you can see the changes.

There is also a possibility that you might get an Access Denied message. If you see this, there is no need to worry since it’s probably just the files you may be currently using. Click on Ignore all and you’ll be just fine.

You don’t have to worry about excluding the C drive from the indexing since files are not saved there any way by default. Other partitions and drives will need to be left out.

How to Completly Turn Off Indexing

Turning off the indexing has been known to cause some issues, but if it’s something you need to do, here’s how it’s done. Open the Control Panel and select Administrative Tools. Click on the Services option. If you prefer, you can also open Services by typing services.msc in the Run dialog.

Once you’re in Services, look for the Windows Search or Indexing Service option. Double-click on the Windows Search and when the new window appears click on the Stop button at the bottom. Don’t forget to modify the Startup Type to Disabled.

Once you’re done with the changes, you’ll need to reboot your computer. Just because you’ve turned Indexing off, it doesn’t mean that there is no way you can perform a search. When you do try to look for something, you’ll just get a message telling you that it will be slower since it’s not functioning.

Conclusion

You shouldn’t have to deal with features you don’t want and don’t need. If Windows indexing is getting in the way of you enjoying a faster computer, now you know how you can get rid of it. Do you find Windows indexing useful? Leave a comment and let us know.