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With the indexing services in Windows, Microsoft have tried to help the user find files and content more quickly.

That's a nice attempt, and it may speed up things for some people. However, if you don't search in your files and mails on an hourly basis, the two Microsoft search services are more of a hassle than help. For files without registered filename extensions they don't work at all.

The indexing services are implemented as Windows services: Indexing Service and Windows Search.

Here are their descriptions:

Indexing Service

Indexes contents and properties of files on local and remote computers; provides rapid access to files through flexible querying language.

Windows Search

Provides content indexing and property caching for file, email and other content (via extensibility APIs).  The service responds to file and email notifications to index modified content.  If the service is stopped or disabled, the Explorer will not be able to display virtual folder views of items, and search in the Explorer will fall back to item-by-item slow search.

The Indexing Service is part of Windows while Windows Search only exists if you either installed it from the Microsoft site or if you have MS Office 2007.

Both services can be stopped and disabled in the Control Panel (Services). On Windows XP, go to Control Panel, Administrative Tools, then open Services. Find both services, right click on them and select Stop from the pop-up menu. Then double click on each one and set the Startup type (about in the middle of the settings window) to Disabled.

Indexing Service

Windows Search

After both services have been stopped and disabled you can still conveniently search for files and content. It may be a bit slower, though, but for most users, I reckon, this is acceptable for the advantage of having a faster computer all other times.

Should you decide later that your searches are too slow and you'd rather have a slower computer while you're not searching, you can always come back to the Control Panel/Services and turn both services back on (Start service, Startup type to Automatic).