HCHTech
Well-Known Member
- Reaction score
- 3,835
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA - USA
I did something I've done a thousand times before without incident, but this time not so much...
I did a remote session cleanup on a customer's 4-year old Windows 7 laptop (it's a consumer HP from January of 2014). It's an older lady that is a bit stuck in her ways, shall we say. There was nothing exciting about the cleanup, got rid of a handful of junkware, cleaned up the browsers, loaded an outstanding update, did a malware scan, which found nothing, and reviewed the event logs for anything exciting - nothing found.
As I often do with older computers still on Win7, I disabled the Customer Experience Improvement Program, and modified the indexing to only include the start menu & internet favorites, then rebuilt the index.
So a couple of days go by and she calls back to tell me "My search isn't working". Oh boy, I thought - I've found the one person on the planet that uses search - I shouldn't have messed with the indexing.
"No problem" I say, "I'll do a quick remote session to see what I can find" (and add back the user folders to the indexing). I do this, and rebuilding the index takes quite a long time - it turns out she has TONS of pictures. No good deed..... Anyway, it finishes, and voila, search works again. It turns out she finds everything on her computer by clicking the start button and typing the filename in the search box. We do several searches and everything is good.
About a week later, I get an email - "I'm sorry, but my search isn't working again." Ugh. I remote in and pull up indexing options - and there are no folders at all being indexed. The search service is running, but there's nothing to be indexed. So this time, I run a chkdsk, and run gsmartcontrol on the hard drive = both find no errors. Hmmm. I look through the event log, nothing seems awry. I do a quick search for evidence of a system restore being run, but don't find any. I apologize, reset the indexing options and rebuild the index again. I tell her to let it run overnight and call me in the morning. Sure enough, search works just fine the next morning.
10 days pass and it's now today. I get another email - "search not working after a Windows update." She's getting less polite. By now I'm thinking of just refunding her money and throwing in the towel, but I smile through clenched teeth and setup another remote. Again I find that there are no folders being indexed at all in the indexing options dialog. The search service is running like before, but no folders are being indexed. I drill down to where the Windows.edb file is stored and I see it there, modified this morning. Definitely weird. I pull up system restore again, but no restorations have been done. I ask if ANYTHING about the computer doesn't seem right other than search. Any other problems? No. (I know, everybody lies, but there it is)
I spend some time searching for reasons this might happen (found nothing, really), I half think she must be doing something that is causing this, but I can't figure out what. I've never seen this symptom before, so I'm stumped. I'd love to help her, but I can't keep fixing it for free every couple of weeks. I tried gently showing her other ways to find files on her computer but of course, she's having none of that. I think I might be in for a complementary N&P! Maybe create a new user profile & copy all of her stuff over?
Any advice on digging out of this hole?
I did a remote session cleanup on a customer's 4-year old Windows 7 laptop (it's a consumer HP from January of 2014). It's an older lady that is a bit stuck in her ways, shall we say. There was nothing exciting about the cleanup, got rid of a handful of junkware, cleaned up the browsers, loaded an outstanding update, did a malware scan, which found nothing, and reviewed the event logs for anything exciting - nothing found.
As I often do with older computers still on Win7, I disabled the Customer Experience Improvement Program, and modified the indexing to only include the start menu & internet favorites, then rebuilt the index.
So a couple of days go by and she calls back to tell me "My search isn't working". Oh boy, I thought - I've found the one person on the planet that uses search - I shouldn't have messed with the indexing.
"No problem" I say, "I'll do a quick remote session to see what I can find" (and add back the user folders to the indexing). I do this, and rebuilding the index takes quite a long time - it turns out she has TONS of pictures. No good deed..... Anyway, it finishes, and voila, search works again. It turns out she finds everything on her computer by clicking the start button and typing the filename in the search box. We do several searches and everything is good.
About a week later, I get an email - "I'm sorry, but my search isn't working again." Ugh. I remote in and pull up indexing options - and there are no folders at all being indexed. The search service is running, but there's nothing to be indexed. So this time, I run a chkdsk, and run gsmartcontrol on the hard drive = both find no errors. Hmmm. I look through the event log, nothing seems awry. I do a quick search for evidence of a system restore being run, but don't find any. I apologize, reset the indexing options and rebuild the index again. I tell her to let it run overnight and call me in the morning. Sure enough, search works just fine the next morning.
10 days pass and it's now today. I get another email - "search not working after a Windows update." She's getting less polite. By now I'm thinking of just refunding her money and throwing in the towel, but I smile through clenched teeth and setup another remote. Again I find that there are no folders being indexed at all in the indexing options dialog. The search service is running like before, but no folders are being indexed. I drill down to where the Windows.edb file is stored and I see it there, modified this morning. Definitely weird. I pull up system restore again, but no restorations have been done. I ask if ANYTHING about the computer doesn't seem right other than search. Any other problems? No. (I know, everybody lies, but there it is)
I spend some time searching for reasons this might happen (found nothing, really), I half think she must be doing something that is causing this, but I can't figure out what. I've never seen this symptom before, so I'm stumped. I'd love to help her, but I can't keep fixing it for free every couple of weeks. I tried gently showing her other ways to find files on her computer but of course, she's having none of that. I think I might be in for a complementary N&P! Maybe create a new user profile & copy all of her stuff over?
Any advice on digging out of this hole?
