Vista - Windows Search service and Indexing Service do not work

Hello, my Indexing Service is not working. The options are grayed out
Also my Windows Search service does not start. When I try to start it, I get these errors in the event log:

1. "The Windows Search Service cannot open the Jet property store.
Details:
The content index server cannot update or access information because of a database error. Stop and restart the search service. If the problem persists, reset and recrawl the content index. In some cases it may be necessary to delete and recreate the content index. (0x8004117f)"


2. "The Windows Search Service has failed to created the new system catalog. Internal error <4,0x8004117f>."

I'm totally lost as how to solve this problem. I spent hours on the web trying to find a solution, with no luck sofar. Anyone here who has a clue how to solve this one?

Emphyrio.

Was this a clean install, or an upgrade from XP.
What sort of HDD arrangement.
More details would be helpful.

Hi, it is a HP Pavillion desktop, 1,6 Ghz Dual Core, the Windows Vista version is integrated. There is one harddrive present, with three partitions.

Hope you can help me. I really do not want to reinstall Vista completely.

Emphyrio.

Which HP Pavillion? Is it completely as stock, have you added anything?
Do you know which version of Vista is installed?
Has this been a problem since you have had the computer or has it just cropped up? Have you changed any settings to try to fix this?
Have you checked the HP website and forums to see if others have had this problem?
Did you partition the HDD or did HP?

Try copying, renamomg, or deleting a file (preferably, in your profile path. That is the directory on your start menu that has your login name). If it takes a very long time to complete the operation, your search database and/or schema files have become corrupted, and need to be rebuilt from scratch.


K.

Hi K,

I'm not quite sure I understand what you want me to do. The indexing service is down, as well as the Search Service. So why would the database and schema files be reinstalled when these services are down?

So will this really help? I already tried to replace the gathrprm.txt and schema.txt files with emtpty ones, but nothing happened. If your suggestion does work, how exactly do I proceed? Just open the explorer on the Start menu button? And then just copy or rename a file? It looks so trivial to me that this would do the trick...

Can you please help me to understand?

thx for your reply though,
E.

Have you tried turning these services on manually? Or have you looked at your services list and seen that they were indicating that they are on?
Right click on Computer from the start menu and select Manage, go down to Services and Applications, then chose Services and a list of services will be in the main window. Look around for likely suspects; for instance Superfetch, mine is indicating Started and Automatic for startup type.
There is also a tab at the bottom that will show you more services and on mine there is one that says Windows Search which shows that it is Started and Automatic.
Someone here is likely to tell you which specific services should be started in your case.
To start them right click on the service.