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spotlight not working at all

C

Carson

macrumors member
Original poster
Hey, my spot light used to work and now It can't find anything. How do I fix it.
I was told to download cocktail utility and make sure jurnaling is on on my computer but i don't know whats next.
 
Try downloading this program then on the tab of the program shown below (Maintainance) (your admin password is required.) choose Reset Spotlight index and see if that solves your problem.
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Alternatively, try rebuilding the Spotlight index by going to System Preferences, clicking on Spotlight, clicking on the Privacy tab, adding your hard drive to the list and closing System Preferences. Now, follow the same routine but this time remove your hard drive from the list. It'll take a little while to reindex. 🙂

If that doesn't work, then go to your Preferences folder and drag a file named com.apple.spotlight.plist to the Desktop, then restart. 🙂
 
Okay, i have read all of these very thoroughly, and nothing is working, i tried the onyx program and did index spotlight execute, and nothing happened, i then went to delete the .plist file, and it wasn't there😕 😱

I also tried the privacy thing and it doesn't even recognize that I've put a Hard Drive into that window, it just stays blank making it impossible to minus it out and re-index. here are some screen shots that tell this story, this is really annoying as i need it for iphoto and for the basics of it. YOU have no idea how painful it is to physically sift through 300 photos for one.... please HELP!

-Wes
 

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okay, i was in the wrong library, well i went to the correct one and i put the file on my desktop, and it replaced it but nothing happened. spotlight still doesn't work, and i have re-installed tiger already (i had the problem previously)

-Wes

Thanks
 
So you reinstalled OSX and still get no Spotlight? What sort of apps have you installed? Any plug ins or hacks? Did Spotlight ever work on this machine? 🙂
 
mad jew said:
Alternatively, try rebuilding the Spotlight index by going to System Preferences, clicking on Spotlight, clicking on the Privacy tab, adding your hard drive to the list and closing System Preferences. Now, follow the same routine but this time remove your hard drive from the list. It'll take a little while to reindex. 🙂

If that doesn't work, then go to your Preferences folder and drag a file named com.apple.spotlight.plist to the Desktop, then restart. 🙂
Click to expand...

thanks so much. this totally helped. only thing: I dragged to desktop, rebooted, spotlight works fine. But what do I do with the com.apple.spotlight.plist file that's still on the desktop? I was afraid to delete it, so I just dragged it back to the folder and checked to make sure spotlight was still working, which it was. is that the right thing to do? Seems counterintuitive to put it back; I would think I should delete it, but I'm not sure what the consequences of that would be.
 
You can delete it if you like. When you dragged it back into the folder, did it ask to replace a similarly-named file? 🙂
 
mad jew said:
You can delete it if you like. When you dragged it back into the folder, did it ask to replace a similarly-named file? 🙂
Click to expand...

Strangely enough, no. I expected it to ask me that. If it did I would have felt more comfortable tossing the old one on the desktop. I don't get it 😕

btw, do you (or anyone) know why this happens in the first place? It's the weirdest thing, along with mac mail's columns always moving around!

thanks again for your help. I was almost ready to go into panic mode, because I thought this was maybe a sign of a much bigger problem.
 
Well, I think the database was most likely corrupt which was unrelated to the PLIST file. A new one hadn't been created yet after the restart so putting the old one back into the same folder didn't matter. I'm pretty sure it would have been the reindexing that helped. It's nothing too much to worry about though, mate. It happens a bit and doesn't seem to be any sign of impending system failure. 🙂
 
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