Spotlight broken

[illegaloperatio]

Hi all

I just went to use spotlight to find a lost file and I noticed it is fubar'd. I type whatever in there and hit enter and nothing happens at all.

I really don't want to reinstall my O/S, hoping someone has run across this before and found a cure. I have not done anything recently that I know of might caused this (but I also havent used spotlight in awhile either).

Thanks!

 

[gauchogolfer]

Try rebuilding Spotlight's database. Under system preferences -> Spotlight, move the entire hard drive into the 'private' area, then move it out again. This will cause Spotlight to re-index the harddrive. It will take a few minutes, so be patient.

 

[illegaloperatio]

Hi again gauchogolfer

I am assuming you mean under the privacy tab, where it says click the add button or drag a folder into the list below.

When I drag anything into it it just slides back from where I drug it from, and if I click the plus sign to add the hard drive it just never happens, nothing shows up under the list.

I think this thing is really broken lol

 

[gauchogolfer]

Alrighty, let's try this. Drag the file com.apple.spotlight.plist to the desktop. It should be located in your preferences folder in /library . Log out and then log back in (a restart isn't required). See if Spotlight behaves, and if not try the 'privacy' procedure again once you've logged back in.

 

[illegaloperatio]

This may be the problem, there is no com.apple.spotlight.plist to be found in that directory!
There are alot of com.apple.plist files in there though. perhaps I can search the net and try to find that file

 

[gauchogolfer]

Make sure that you are looking in /users/<your username>/library/preferences/ for the folder, as there is also a /library/preferences folder that is located in Macintosh HD/library/preferences that will not contain the spotlight file.

 

[illegaloperatio]

Ah heck I fixed it looking around through google I found a program that turned spotlight off then rebooted then turned it back on and rebooted and now it's indexing. yee haw

Thanks for the help anyway!

 

[gauchogolfer]

Glad you got it worked out .
Maybe you could post a link to the program you used to cycle Spotlight on/off, for future people who may search the forums if they have a similar problem.

 

[illegaloperatio]

Glad you got it worked out .
Maybe you could post a link to the program you used to cycle Spotlight on/off, for future people who may search the forums if they have a similar problem.

Right, I was on my way to work this morning and had to run out the door abruptly.

I downloaded a freeware program called spotless11 linked below, and quoted the instructions I followed

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/26842

There is a chance that you have HOSTCONFIG (in /etc) broken, it will
show you the state of spotlight to be loaded or not. It will say
"spotlight indexing not active" if server is not running. It has
"Enable spotlight indexing" option up that time. You should enable it
first and reboot. If it is loaded already or after rebooting, do this:

When you launch it, it will display indexing status of all disks.
Click disk one by one , click "delete entire index directory", it will
show you a prompt for deleting and disabling, deleting and enabling. As
you use spotlight, you must delete and enable. It will start indexing
freshly.

There must be other freeware etc. around but I used spotless only and
can't suggest anything I didn't try/use myself.