Folks,
The Google Desktop search bar has stopped working, apparently due to
too-slow searching of the local desktop index. This problem started a
couple of weeks ago.
HOW TO REPRODUCE:
The procedure to reproduce the problem (on my PC) is:
1. Press the Ctrl key twice to show the google-search-bar.
2. attempt to type: jdbc (or whatever) into the search-term textbox.
The search bar "freezes" once "jd" has been entered. So I wait.
After about 5 seconds, the background of the "transparent undecorated
window" containing the snazy rounded search-bar turns black (i.e. it
stops being repainted).
Sometimes the search-bar spontaniously dissapears before the 10
seconds is up, sometimes it stays stuck... and then...
After about 10 seconds, the O/S (Vista) displays it's "Process not
responding (kill or wait)" dialogue.
HOW TO WORK AROUND THE PROBLEM:
1. Press the Ctrl key twice --> shows the Google Desktop search-bar.
2. Click the "Options" link, on the top-right of the search-bar.
3. Click on "more options" --> opens Google Desktop Preferences page
in browser.
4. Navigate to the "Display" tab.
5. In the "Quick Find:" section untick the checkbox labeled "Show
desktop search results as I type".
6. OK Everything.
--> Result --> You can still use google desktop to search the web, but
you will no longer see hits for local content... which is fine with me
anyway.
MORE INFORMATION:
The onset of this problem was sudden, and apparently spontaneous. I
have been using Google desktop without any real problems for a couple
of years.
Upping the process-priority of GoogleDesktop.exe to RealTime helps
some, but does not actually solve the problem, i.e. just sometimes I
get to type a whole _three_ characters before it dies in the ass!
If you paste the search-term into the search-bar everything works
fine... I presume this is because the local-content-search-engine
doesn't get a chance to kick-in BEFORE it's been given a search term
with a hope-in-hell of finding less than a million hits.
This MAY be relevant, but I doubt it. About a month ago, we had a
power-cut while my PC was running... i.e. a "slam down".
The C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Local\Google\Google Desktop
\0d515b14512b directory is 244 MB.
* SearchIndexer.exe (Vistas indexing service) process is using 291 MB
with 63 MB resident.
* GoogleDesktop.exe process is using 147 MB with 6 MB resident.
I suspect that it's just that my PC has hit a tipping point into "Too
much indexed content relative to available RAM", and the index search
is dieing because Windows is is paging the indexer service -->
thrashing --> timeout --> abort.
MY PLATFORM:
Google Desktop : 5.9.0909.30391-en-pb
O/S : MS Vista Ultimate (32bit) ~ Autoupdates current asat 2009-11-08.
H/W : AMD Athlon 64 Dual Core 3800+ 2.01GHz, 2.00Gb of RAM
HDD: Samsung HD400LD ATA
~ C:\ is NTFS. Used 267 of 372 GB. Indexed by windows.
~ Defrag runs every Monday night (all night;-)
~ Disk check reports no errors (or is that errors that it can't fix?).
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