Microsoft Windows Vista and Windows 7 has a Windows Search Indexing service installed and enabled that allows the operating system to search certain places quickly finding files or programs in a flash. In order to search certain locations on your computer quickly the Windows Search indexing service indexes the contents of each location in advance and stores them in memory to speed up it’s search. This can take up a lot of memory and resources and will certainly affect your computers performance. It might even be indexing locations that you never even intend to search for files on. This is why you need to either disable theWindows Search indexing service or modify its process to do minimal work.

Of course you do not need to alter any settings for the Windows Search indexing service if you have not recognized any performance problems on your computer. However if you want to speed up your computer, this is just one of the tasks you can do.

How to disable the Windows Search Indexing completely for all locations:


  1. Go to the Start Menu.
  2. Type services.msc in the search box. As you are typing you will see items appear in the menu. This is because it is being indexed and can be searched quickly.
  3. Scroll-down to find the Indexing Service which is called Windows search and double-click it.
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4.  Press on  the Stop button to Stop the indexing service.
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5.  Under Startup type press on the drop down arrow to see choices.
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6.  Choose Disabled.

After disabling and turning off the Windows Indexing Service, you will still be able to use the Windows search but it will work more slowly than with the indexing enabled.