Windows Search is Slowing Your PC

Windows Search is a service that runs in the background of Microsoft Windows and constantly indexes files in order to speed up the actual time a user initiated search takes. In a work environment, Windows Search can be very helpful especially in an organization with many written documents with text to index, especially for helping employees find documents they may need.

For a gamer, especially one with a lower end computer, Windows Search can be a real curse as the indexer can be accessing the hard drive for files attempting to index while a game is running.  A lot of games rely on the pagefile and having the hard drive being accessed between different programs can cause in-game lag or system instability.

Of course with top of the line computers, a setting like Windows Search isn't much of an issue but we feel running a service you don't really need, isn't worth running.

So what does the indexer really do? It creates a database of terms so when a search within windows is processed, Windows can access the internal database it has created before having to actually go through each file.

When you have this service disabled the search goes through each file looking for the term queried which does take longer without the index service running but with the infrequency of searches the average user makes, is it really that big of a deal? We don't think so.

To disable the Indexing service is easy, simply open up Microsoft Services, the easiest way is with the Windows Key + R and typing "services.msc" followed by the enter key. Once the Services windows is up, find "Microsoft Search" (has been called "Indexing Service" in earlier versions of Windows) and go into it's properties. Change the "Startup type:" to "Disabled" and stop the service.

Windows Key + R

Microsoft Run Console

Scroll down to "Windows Search"

Change the "Startup type:" to "Disabled" and either click on Start or restart your system.