How to Reset & Rebuild Windows Search Index Completely

When you search for files on your computer using Windows Search via File Explorer or Cortana, the files you expect to find may not appear in the search results. This happens even though the files exist on the computer.

Another situation is that some phantom files appear in search results, whereas you may have deleted the files long back. In some cases, the searches may be very slow whether or not the folder location is included in the index.

This post tells you how to fix Windows Search issues in Windows 10 and earlier.

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Cause

The above-mentioned issues usually happen if the search index hasn’t updated correctly. Here are the possible causes of the problem:

• Windows Search service fails, with error 0x80070002 or 0x80070005.
• Windows Search service fails, with error 0x80040d06 (-2147749126) indicating that the catalog is corrupt. In this case, a complete reset ought to fix the problem.
• The file is not in an indexed location, so searches may run slow.
• The file type of the file you’re trying to find is not indexed.
• The file has properties that prevent it from being indexed.
• The file has no index attribute that prevents it from being indexed.
• The search indexer has not updated the file in its database.
• Search may be slow due to the huge Windows.edb database

As Windows Search indexes the details and meta information of every file from included locations, your search queries fetch results quickly. This is because Windows Search fetches results from its database file (.edb) rather than searching the file system. When searching non-indexed locations, searches will be accurate but very slow as the system has to scour through every file and folder.

Windows Search and the advanced query syntax are awesome features when they work, and indexing is one of the best features Microsoft has added to Windows.

How to Repair, Reset and Rebuild the Windows Search Index

Using Search Troubleshooter

Most of the Search Indexing issues can be fixed using the built-in Windows Search Troubleshooter tool.

1. To run the search troubleshooter, right-click Start, click Run. Type the following command and click OK.

   msdt.exe -ep SystemSettings_Troubleshoot_L2 -id SearchDiagnostic

   In Windows 10, you can also launch the troubleshooter via Start → Settings → Update & Security → Troubleshoot → Search and Indexing
   
   

2. In the troubleshooter window, click Advanced and select Apply repairs automatically if you want the tool to automatically fix your settings. If you just want to do a dry run, have the option unchecked.
   
3. Select all the checkboxes that apply.
   
   

The Search and Indexing troubleshooter checks for the following potential issues:

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Manually Reset Windows Search and Rebuild the Index

The Search troubleshooter is the most preferred way to troubleshoot search and indexing issues, as it automates many things (depending upon the checkbox options you selected).

However, if you want to manually reset Windows Search, delete and rebuild the index, use these steps:

1. Start the Registry Editor regedit.exe and go to:

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Search

2. Change the registry value SetupCompletedSuccessfully data from 1 to 0
   
   The above registry change SetupCompletedSuccessfully = 0 causes Windows Search to clear custom indexed locations, add default locations, and rebuild the index from scratch.
3. Exit the Registry Editor.
4. Open the Services MMC (services.msc)
5. Restart the Windows Search service.
   

Before resetting search, this is how the Indexed Locations dialog looked like, containing many obsolete folder locations:

After resetting the search, Included Locations is reset to Windows 10 defaults.

This reset & rebuild method essentially resolves most of the Windows search problems.

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Rebuild Windows Search Index Without Resetting

The earlier method resets Windows Search locations and forces a rebuild of the index upon the next restart, or after restarting the Windows Search service. To rebuild just the index without resetting the indexed folder locations, use these steps:

Click Start, type indexing, and click on Indexing Options in search results.

In case the Start menu search doesn’t work, you can launch Indexing Options directly by running the following command from Run dialog or Command Prompt.

control srchadmin.dll

In the Indexing Options dialog, click Advanced. Under Troubleshooting section, click Rebuild.

This deletes and rebuilds the index completely.

Note that if Windows detects user activity in the system, indexing is slowed down drastically. After a couple of minutes of no user activity, indexing continues in full swing. Regardless, when I checked, the searchindexer.exe and its allied processes didn’t use more than 15% of the CPU at any given point in time, even when the system was left idle.

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Defrag the Search index database Windows.edb to reduce the file size

If you index too many files & folders and the Outlook PST files, the Windows search index database file Windows.edb would grow huge in size. In some instances, the file size can be larger than 50 GB. That’s because, in Windows 8 and Windows 10, both properties and persistent indexes are stored in Windows.edb. Also, Windows 8, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 index the entire contents of files, regardless of their size.

Important: The procedure works only in Windows 10. On Windows 11, there is no longer a Windows.edb JET database file. Windows 11 uses Windows.db, which is a SQLite Database file that can’t be compressed using esentUtl.exe.

To reduce the Windows search index database size, index less content. Another option to reduce the size of Windows.edb is to compact or defrag the file using esentutl.exe. Follow these steps:

Open an admin Command Prompt window, and run these commands:

sc config wsearch start= disabled
net stop wsearch
esentUtl.exe /d %AllUsersProfile%\Microsoft\Search\Data\Applications\Windows\Windows.edb
sc config wsearch start= delayed-auto
net start wsearch

The above commands stop/disable Windows Search, compact (defrag) the search index database, and then start Windows Search. Compaction of the Windows.edb database has reduced the size to 200 MB from 310 MB on my computer — ~30% savings.

Resetting the Search index, or removing unwanted folder locations from the search index, and compacting the database would certainly improve the search performance in your system.