Windows 7 Indexing - How to turn it off

AirCooledHeaven

I have a new win7 laptop and I'm trying to eek as much 'performance' from it as possible. I've removed all the pre-installed bloatware, all the unnecessary startup entries and services, cleared it out with CCleaner, and defragged the hard drive. It's now a lot faster to boot up and more responsive during use. The only thing left to sort out is to ditch drive indexing as I understand this is an unnecessary use of resources (I always know where to find my stuff and never have to search for anything).

But what's the best way to turn it off??

If I click on the properties for the hard disk there's a 'allow files on this drive to have contents indexed...' checkbox which is currently ticked.

Then in control panel 'turn windows features on or off' there is 'windows search' which is currently on.

Finally in services there is 'windows search' which is currently set for 'automatic'

So which of these do I disable? Or all of them? Whaty is the function of each?

TIA

John_Gray

Does Googling for "windows 7 turn off indexing" get you anywhere? Or do you go "Eek"?!

AirCooledHeaven

John_Gray wrote: »

Does Googling for "windows 7 turn off indexing" get you anywhere? Or do you go "Eek"?!

Sigh... Yes of course I googled it, and have not found a definitive answer as to where to switch it off, hence my post. If I could have found a satisfactory answer on google I would not have risked exposing myself to the pedants and trolls on this forum eek!

Millionaire

Personally I would leave it on. IMO is doesn't affect the system performance that much once it's settled down on a new pc.

Also, even though I know where most programs are located on my PC, using the search feature is a a lot quicker.

dg1dd1ngs_2

Type 'Services' in the Windows search bar, click on it. Scroll down to 'Windows Search' and right click on it, select 'Properties', and where it says Startup type, choose from the drop down 'Disabled' then click 'Apply'

Aiadi

http://www.computingunleashed.com/speed-up-windows-7-ultimate-guide-to.html


Look at step 1 of this good guide.

GeoffX

A better way is to right-click on a drive in Windows Explorer, click the properties tab, then uncheck "Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties". If you have more than one hard disk or partition, do it for each of them.

If I remember correctly, disabling the service means you also lose the search boxes in both Windows Explorer and on the Start menu.

John_Gray

AirCooledHeaven wrote: »

Sigh... Yes of course I googled it, and have not found a definitive answer as to where to switch it off, hence my post. If I could have found a satisfactory answer on google I would not have risked exposing myself to the pedants and trolls on this forum eek!

Perhaps you should have stated what you had already done to solve your problem, then. Not everyone is psychic.

AirCooledHeaven

John_Gray wrote: »

Perhaps you should have stated what you had already done to solve your problem, then. Not everyone is psychic.

John if you have something constructive and informative to contribute to my initial question then I would be pleased to hear it. Otherwise please go and troll in another thread. Of course, in all future posts I will prefix my question with "I have googled but not found a satisfactory answer" just to keep people like you happy. Jeeez...