No results in Spotlight

M

matthisd

Registered
I have recently found that I am not getting any results in spotlight. Hadn't used the search engine in a few weeks, and now I get absolutely nothing.

This counts for the main spotlight window, the menu bar icon, and in windows.

I have recently installed windows through boot camp partitionning. Don't know if that could be the problem.

Have scoured the internet for possible reasons/solutions. Nothing fits my issue specifically, whether apple support site or 3rd party websites (several google-wide searches).

Help!
 
look in spotlight preferences, under the privacy tab. are there any directories or volumes here? if your main drive is here, then remove it.

if it was, then this should start the indexing process again, but after that, it'll be up and running again.
 
And if your main drive ISN'T in the privacy tab, you might want to put it there, wait a few minutes, and then remove it. This will force Spotlight to scrap its current database and rebuild it. This is time-consuming, but sometimes it needs to be done to fix Spotlight's quirks.

I've also found that sometimes the only way to get any kind of searches to work is to disable Spotlight entirely. At least then I can search by file name. I still have no idea what causes these problems with Spotlight. All I can say is, Spotlight is buggy as heck. :mad:
 
I tried to add the drive, but nothing is appearing in the list. I can't add anything in my privacy list... I downloaded spotless, but it says that spotlight is configured to load at startup but that indexing is off! No idea how to turn it on, I scoured all the prefs.
 
I have rebooted several times since the this problem started, and it has not helped. I am still looking for a solution, so if anybody has any ideas, I'm all ears!

Thanks!
 
You can manipulate Spotlight more directly from Terminal. First, check the status of Spotlight on your volume like this:

sudo mdutil -s "/Volumes/your_volume_name_here"

Hit Return, and enter your password when prompted (don't be surprised by the lack of feedback as you type your password; just enter the whole thing and hit Return). It'll tell you if indexing is enabled on that drive. If it's not, you can enable it like this:

sudo mdutil -i on "/Volumes/your_volume_name_here"

If it was already on, try deleting the current index (which will force OS X to rebuild it), like this:

sudo mdutil -E "/Volumes/your_volume_name_here"

Hope this helps.

And for more info on how to use mdutil, simply enter "man mdutil" into Terminal.
 
matthisd said:
I have rebooted several times since the this problem started, and it has not helped. I am still looking for a solution, so if anybody has any ideas, I'm all ears!

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Dealing with Spotlight from Terminal

Check for volume names...
cd /Volumes
ls

1) Using the mdutil command-line utility in Terminal, turn off indexing for each of your drives. Example:

• $ sudo mdutil -i off /Volumes/your_hard_drive_name_1

2) Then use mdutil to remove the indexes from each drive
• $ sudo mdutil -E /Volumes/your_hard_drive_name_1

3) Physically remove the .Spotlight directories from the root of each drive.
• $ cd /
• $ sudo rm -fr .Spotlight-V100
(do the same for your second or third drive)

4) Use mdutil again to turn indexing back on for each drive
• $ sudo mdutil -i on /Volumes/your_hard_drive_name_1

5) Spotlight will now re-index all drives

jb.
 
I have finally solved my problem. Unfortunately I am not too sure what it is that I changed.
Before I checked the last posts above, I downloaded a program called Tiger Cache Cleaner which includes a Spotlight Manager. I opened the program, then the manager. But there was nothing that could solve my problem. So I closed the manager, but I could hear the cpu work a bit more than usual. After I closed the program I tried Spotlight. It automatically started indexing my computer, and now it works perfectly!
If anybody know what it is the program does, it might be interesting to know how to do it manually, if it happens again.

Thanks for everybody's input!
 
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