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General System Issues June 2002 • Vol.8 Issue 6 Page(s) 140-141 in print issue |
Nix The Indexing Why Your Hard Drive Runs For Hours | ||
 Although you may not be familiar with Windows XP's Indexing Service, chances are, it has been quietly lurking in the background of your WinXP system consuming precious system resources to perform a valuable but relatively unknown function. The Indexing Service searches your hard drive for specific types of documents (such as HTML [Hypertext Markup Language], text [TXT], and Microsoft Office documents) and creates a database of these documents and their locations, speeding up WinXP's ability to find certain files (as well as data within those files) when you use the Search Companion to search for them.  Define Its Importance. The Indexing Service utility might be useful for folks managing tons of data and documents, but few home users will probably use it, leaving it in the background to waste system resources. The continuous searching and cataloging of the Indexing Service can potentially bog down a slower computer system and cause unnecessary wear and tear on your hard drive, depending on how your system has the utility configured. Computer users might even mistake spontaneous hard drive activity initiated by the Indexing Service as a virus or a cracker breaking into their system. If your computer's hard drive starts grinding away unexpectedly during a brief period of idleness, odds are it's WinXP's indexing utility going to work. Disable the Indexing Service utility. Despite being difficult to find, the Indexing Service is easy to control. Click the Start button, select Settings, click Control Panel, double-click Administrative Tools, and then double-click the Computer Management icon. (You can also open Computer Management by right-clicking the My Computer icon on your Desktop and selecting Manage from the menu.) Once the Computer Management window opens, click the plus sign (+) next to Services And Applications in the left pane (called the console tree). Click Indexing Service to highlight it, open the Action menu, and then click Stop. Open the Action menu again, select All Tasks, and click Tune Performance. From the Indexing Service Usage dialog box, select the Never Used option, click OK, and then click Yes to confirm and disable the Indexing Service.
Sliding the performance bars to the left decreases the performance of the Indexing Service (but reduces the amount of system resources required to maintain it), while sliding the bars to the right improves searching and cataloging performance (at the expense of using more system resources). Control how the Indexing Service operates. If the Indexing Service is something you want to use, here are some tips for using it. From the Computer Management window, click the plus sign (+) next to Services And Applications, double-click Indexing Service, and then double-click the System icon. Below the System icon are two folders: Directories and Properties. There is also an HTML document labeled Query The Catalog. To disable the Indexing Service only for specific folders, double-click the Directories folder to view a list of folders in the right pane. Double-click a specific folder to open an Add Directory dialog box. Click the radio button next to No to disable the Indexing Service for the directory. If you want to add folders for the Indexing Service to catalog, right-click the Directory folder, select New, then Directory. In the Path field at the top of the dialog box, type the path to the folder you want the Indexing Service to catalog. For example, if you have documents in a folder named Docs on your C: drive, type c:\docs. If you're unsure of the exact path to the folder you want to add, click the Browse button and browse to it. Click Yes to include the directory in the Indexing Service's searches, and then click OK to finish. The Indexing Service can also catalog directories and files located on computers in a network. For example, if you have a small home network and share files between computers, type the path to the folder in the Path field using this format: \\computername\sharename. So, to catalog a shared My Documents folder on a computer named Bubba on your network, you need to type \\bubba\my documents in the Path field. Most home users seldom need the Indexing Service and probably are better off just deactivating it and saving their computer's resources. However, if you frequently need to manage and/or search for numerous documents and sift through their contents, the Indexing Service can be a valuable tool.  by P. Bryan Edge-Salois |
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