Comments on: How to speed up Vista: disable the slow slow search

By: Karl

Karl — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 08:59:15 +0000

Success at last after more than 2 years of sluggishness !

After rebuilding the index files and removing network shared folders from indexing, my computer is now *MUCH* faster when opening folders ( 2GB with a typical lag of 9 seconds. Task manager even reported memory hard faults during this time period.

Once a folder had been opened, opening it again during the same session resulted in the folder opening instantly.

Brief System Info:
—————–
MS VISTA SP3
Memory: 4GB
CPU: AMD X2 4800
HD: 640GB

MS Outlook not installed.
Fancy Icon views disabled.
Anti-Virus : AVG
Firewall : Comodo

THANKS
——-
Thank you Tim and others for
correcting this VERY irritating
problem. Opening Folders still
seems slower than my most ancient
1GHz laptop running Win XP, but
is now at an acceptable level.

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 12 May 2009 15:33:55 +0000

I run Vista & Office 2007… I agree… My system is MUCH faster after I turn off the search service… Microsoft has some work todo…

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 20:42:07 +0000

Guys, The name of the game is HARDWARE!! If you have the necessary hardware, Vista will run FLAWLESSLY!! I have an AMD AthlonX2 5000 CPU, 4GB PC6400 DDR2 RAM, 320GB SATA HD, 1GB NVIDIA GeForce 8500GT Video on an ASUS Motherboard and have NO ISSUES with indexing, or any other performance issues. I have Outlook 2007 with 3 profiles 1 3GB OST, and 2 2+ GB pst files. They open right away! EVERY TIME! I’m running Vista Ultimate 64 bit edition. If you’re running less than 2GB of RAM try using the Ready-Boost feature. That has helped a lot of my friends.
If you dont’t have a good amount of RAM, UPGRADE ASAP!!

By: Erle

Erle — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:31:55 +0000

Disabling search works for me!
The main combination that slows my machine is outlook 2007 AND word 2007 (Vista x64).

By: John

John — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 20:58:35 +0000

Tim – you’re not alone with the indexing problem. I have a Dell 1520 which started slowing down badly, outlook 2007 would start cleanly and the data file didn’t close message appeared regularly. removed all the non-microsoft add-ins to outlook and it wasn’t until I disabled windows indexing that the computer sprung back to life. At this stage I haven’t reactivated the indexing and am reluctant to until someone comes up with a positive reason. The only thing that was left running as an Outlook add-in was MS’s Business contact Manager and I’m wondering if this is/was a contributing factor – do you have it running as well?

By: Matthew

Matthew — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 22:17:56 +0000

Tim,

I just stopped the search/indexing service on my system and the difference is very very perceptible – however, I do not use IE or outlook, so I am with a few above posters that it is not necessarily Outlook related.

also, it seems that every time I installed a program (that was pre-XP) my computer would slow to a crawl for the next day or so, however this problem has vanished since I stopped search. Anecdotal, I know, but probably connected.

By: Jon

Jon — Mon, 19 May 2008 21:01:15 +0000

excellent tip, my dual core 2GB RAM media center pc has been struggling with the most basic functions of opening and populating control panel and worse, juddery DVB-TV with the disk light constantly flashing…so far, with search stopped, it’s calmed down and I can actually pretend to be watching TV, not cringing while I wait for Vi$ta to tear up the picture and audio again.
How M$ expect people to ever adopt this shaftware as a mainstream consumer app I’ll never know, if my TV glitched like Windows, it would be back in the shop in seconds!

By: Adam Gaunt

Adam Gaunt — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 16:49:20 +0000

……cont.
Disable Offline Files from the Contol Panel.
Sorry – I forgot that I had also done this prior to my stopping the Defender service.
Upon reflection (and further testing), this has made the bigger difference.

Apologies for the false start – It is old age doing this I fear!
Adam

By: Adam Gaunt

Adam Gaunt — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 16:24:39 +0000

Try stopping Windows Defender’s service. Doing so (on 2 machines) solved the problem you are all describing.

I tried all suggestions above (and many others) to no avail.

Happy New Year.

Adam

By: Jordan

Jordan — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 02:23:11 +0000

Normally, I don’t comment on these boards, but I have had such a headache with my brand new Vista / Office 2007 laptop, that I thought I would share… First, Tim is right on!

But I got to the same solution somewhat differently. After a couple hours with a Microsoft engineer….

First off. If you are going to shut off the indexing service in Windows, you also have to shut off the indexing service in Outlook as well (it’s in the Adins area). If you don’t turn off both, one will look for the other in an endless loop, slowing the system down.

To that end, with Outlook not open, I turned Windows indexing ON!! and then had it reindex the entire drive. Wait for it to finish the full index.

Then I reopened Outlook, made sure that the Adin was enabled. Shut Outlook down.

Then turned the e-mail virus scanner off.

Then rebooted the machine and lauched Outlook.

As unreal as it may seem, in my situation this solved EVERY problem, and my Outlook 2007 is running on par with my Outlook 2003…. maybe a tad slower.

The indexing is the key.