3 big problems with new intel mac

T

ThickAir

Pixel Hustler
I recently purchased an 8-core (3.2) Mac Pro and noticed 3 major problems that I can't explain because they were always there from day 1.

1) Spotlight is unusable from the menu bar. It always says it's indexing and shows a progress bar with the constant bars moving fast like it's preparing to index. I even disconnected any firewire drives and disconnected the system from the network to make sure it wasn't getting hung up on external files. 2 weeks later and it's still indexing. Restarts don't help. Is this a bug? Any way I can reset the indexing?

2) When I search for files in the finder (by file name or contents) most files aren't found. I assume this relates to the indexing in spotlight but even if I search a folder I'm in, it isn't found.

3) In Mail, I can search for things no problem except for one huge one. The text link to search the "Entire Message" is grayed out. Needless to say but messages are not easily found without being able to search the body copy.

If anyone can help with this I'd appreciate it because it's driving me mad. I have all the latest updates for OS X and I also have all my intego software installed and there are no viruses found. I'm guessing there's something messed up with spotlight and it's affecting all 3 of these areas.

Thanks
 
Well fixing Spotlight has been around and I hope you are not afraid of the Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal). Open Terminal and type the command:

sudo mdutil -E /

Then input your password and let it run the indexing again. It should finish within one half hour. Good Luck.


PS: Download the free maintenance application Onyx and it will also reset spotlight along with other maintenance tasks (that should be done once every two months-rebooting twice after cleaning cache to rebuild startup & shutdown cache).
 
For the Mail problem if reseting Spotlight doesn't fix it then you can "reset" and program by going to the folder /YourHardDrive/Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/ and throwing out the preference file you want to reset (the ones for Mail are com.apple.mail.plist & com.apple.mail.searchhistory.plist). Warning though, the delete of the Mail Preference file will erase your email server settings so write down the email server settings before deleting. Good Luck.
 
Well I let this run all day and it's still running. Activity monitor shows that a process called mds is using 100% CPU which I assume is part of that utility.

If you know any other ways of trying to fix this please let me know, I'm going to try in Onyx right now.

I'll try that with mail. I have the prefs backed up anyway.
 
okay, I tried and retried and tried again all the suggestions.

I tried shutting off indexing for my bootcamp volume of windows xp x64 but the indexing still doesn't complete, it just nears the end of indexing sooner.

Onyx fails. twice, after deleting the plist file and restarting and running the mdutil spotlight DID start rebuilding the cache. however, when it neared the end of the progress bar it hangs indefinitely and I get an error like: -2738475647438 until completion.

maybe there is some file or folder that spotlight is getting hung up on? I don't know but it's driving me nuts. I'm going to try and run some stuff in techtool and see if helps. If anyone else has suggestions please let me know.

Thanks

D
 
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