Home » Tips & Tricks: PC

Disable Indexing Service In Windows Vista

Posted By: BioTecK on Thursday 15 January 2009 with 10 Comments

The index service scans through files and folders on your system, whether you’re using XP or Vista, and records information about them in index files in order to speed out the searching speed. In Windows Vista the indexing options runs automatically in the background to index all the files in the Start Menu, user profile folders and files setup by default. Like any PC user you probably have a lot of file in these locations and if you’re using your computer and the files in those location the indexing service may slow your pc’s performance, and that’s not what we want, do we? :wink:

Like I mentioned in a post called “Disabling Indexing Service In Windows XP” which I posted some months ago, I don’t use the search function and I don’t want to loose any performance because of function which I don’t use. So what you need to do is disable the indexing service. By disabling the index service you can gain more CPU & RAM Resources and improve the performance of your computer, but it will slows you down when searching for files.

You can disable indexing service in Vista in three methods.

Method 1: Disabling the index service through the Turn Windows features on or off screen

  1. Go to Start -> Control Panel
  2. Choose Uninstall a Program
  3. In the next window search for Turn Windows features on or off at the right side of the window and search for Indexing Service. See the screenshot here below.
  4. Uncheck the box for Indexing Service and click ok.

Method 2: Disabling the index service on a particular hard disk drive

  1. Open My Computer
  2. Right click on the hard drive to disable indexing (i.e (C:) drive letter).
  3. Select Properties on the contextual menu.
  4. Click on General tab if it’s not already selected.
  5. Uncheck the check box for Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching option.
  6. Click OK, and wait for the index removal process to complete, which may take a few minutes.

Method 3: Disabling the index service for ALL hard disks at once

This is the fastest, and my favorite, way to disable the indexing service

  1. Go to Start and run Service in the Start Search bar
  2. Search for Windows Search Service and select Properties
  3. In the screen choose Disabled for the start type.
  4. Now you have to stop this service by clicking on Stop

Note: Searching is still possible after disabling of indexing service but it will be more slowly.

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10 Comments so far, be the next one! »

  • J.C. said:
    17 January 2009 at 17:58

    This is a very useful tip, thanks for this, I have tried it, and I already see significant improvement in my PC’s performance.

    J.C.´s last blog post..The Only Way To Get There

  • chethan said:
    18 January 2009 at 19:57

    Windows indexing service in vista and xp, consume considerable amount of system resources. It’s only use is optimizing the ’search’ feature – hence it’s worth only when we use this feature.

    When we are not using the ’search’ feature frequently, i agree that disabling it is a very good thing to do.

    But, I have tried this and i’m facing some problems with this, like:

    - in vista, after disabling it, whenever i’m accessing a drive for which i have disabled the feature, populating the contents on the screen takes pretty long time

    - frequently the system shows a message to activate indexing for faster search

    I would be very happy if you can help me out solving this :smile:

    CHETHAN

  • BioTecK (author) said:
    20 January 2009 at 06:19

    That’s great isn’t it J.C.!

    Really?? I have turned it off for a couple of weeks and I haven’t experienced something like that Chetan. Let me do a check and I’ll get back to you asap! :)

  • Madmouse Blog said:
    21 January 2009 at 14:40

    It is strange that with a system with 8gb of ram, raptor 10,000 rpm 300gb hardrive and a core 2 dual 3.0 quad processor, I am still concerned about speed.

    It is a flaw on mine, I hate waiting on my computer.

  • BioTecK (author) said:
    24 January 2009 at 12:00

    LOL! :D Yeah, I hate waiting too Madmouse Blog!:wink:
    Beside that.. I don’t like having services running when I don’t use them!

  • Home Accents said:
    2 March 2009 at 23:19

    I really hate to use some resources for nothing when the reality is that I need that support for other task that help me at work. Thanks for the tip.

  • BioTecK (author) said:
    6 March 2009 at 06:37

    LOL! :D Same here Home Accents!:mrgreen:

  • Darryl said:
    28 March 2009 at 20:08

    I’ve got Vista and have indexing turned off. I use Everything (http://www.voidtools.com/) for searches. It turns up the same information as Windows Search does, but it’s lightning fast.

  • BioTecK (author) said:
    29 March 2009 at 14:24

    Thnx a lot for mentioning it Darryl.. :)

  • Andre said:
    28 August 2009 at 16:03

    I didn’t know before that disabling index service can improve PC’s performance, i wanna give it a try. Thanks for your tips here.