Indexing problem

[PatientWaiter]

I never realized how much I use spotlight until it stopped working and I'm lost without it.

A few days ago, I went to use it and it says "...Spotlight will be available as soon as the contents of your computer have been indexed." with a status/time remaining bar that looks like a spinning barbershop poll... it's not giving an estimated time.

I have had a sneaking suspicion my computer is on its last legs for a few months now. She's over 7 years old now. I literally have to smack the case hard to get it to stop making a loud vibrating, crunchy sound so that it will stop sputtering and resume working. Is this the sign of a failing HD? Seems to be that it's still functional as I type on it now.

At the least, I need spotlight back up and running. Any solutions?

Macbook Pro (1,1)
Intel Core Duo 2.16 GHz

Cheers,
PW

 

[Weaselboy]

That does sound like you have a hard drive on its last legs.

You might be able to get it going a bit by doing a disk repair. If you are on Lion 10.7 or later, do a command-r boot to recovery then use Disk Utility to do a repair disk. If you are prior to Lion, boot from your installer DVD and do the same thing.

Then afterward, reindex Spotlight by entering the command below in Terminal.

sudo mdutil -E /

Make sure you have a backup before you do this. A word of warning though, if the drive is in really bad shape, a repair disk can actually sometimes make it worse.