Spotlight problems

[TrenchcoatJedi]

Hey all, I got a problem with spotlight. When I enter anything into the spotlight field, nothing happens. It doesn't return any results for any query. I already tried deleting the .Spotlight-V100 file on my HD and rebooting. Spotlight reindexed my HD but I still get no results returned when typing in anything.

I'm running 10.4.4 on an iBook G4 with 640MB of RAM and a 60 GB drive. Any help is appreciated.

 

[mad jew]

Perhaps find a file named com.apple.spotlight.plist and drag it to the Desktop. It's in your User's Library Preference folder.

 

[rendezvouscp]

I know this sounds silly, but you might want to re-run the 10.4.4 update to see if it starts to work again. I've had this problem before on multiple macs and they've always started to work again after an update.
-Chasen

 

[TrenchcoatJedi]

I trashed the plist file and nothing happened. I don't understand this because spotlight worked just fine last night and all of a sudden this morning, it's broken.

 

[Sogo]

Question: If I were to add a spotlight comment to a file, and then move that file to another mac, would i still be able to find it using spotlight?

 

[yankeefan24]

when i bought tiger, spotlight was my second to last reason for buying (automator was/is the last). Now, spotlight is my favorite part of it. If i want to find a chat i had with friend a, i can just type in friend a on 2006-01-29 at 4:46.

I think that you just have to just reinstall the update. Good luck. I don't think i could live without spotlight now.

 

[rendezvouscp]

Question: If I were to add a spotlight comment to a file, and then move that file to another mac, would i still be able to find it using spotlight?

I believe so. I put some URL's on some images and transferred them to a different mac, and they stuck. I could be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure they stick.
-Chasen

 

[Applespider]

Question: If I were to add a spotlight comment to a file, and then move that file to another mac, would i still be able to find it using spotlight?

Yes, since the spotlight comments are written to the file itself and not the Spotlight index. So when you move the file, the comments move with it - just as the creator's name stays on a Word document.

Once the file is indexed on the new Mac, Spotlight should find it.

 

[TrenchcoatJedi]

So how do I reinstall 10.4.4?

I'm pretty dependant on spotlight because I have a buttload of PDFs that I need to search for keywords.

 

[rendezvouscp]

I'm talking about updating it again. Go to /Library/Receipts/MacOSXUpdate10.4.4Patch.pkg and install using that, or if that's not there, download 10.4.4 from Apple and install that.

A complete reinstall can be done from the Tiger discs or the system discs, but I'm not suggesting that unless nothing else works.
-Chasen

 

[dolphin842]

I've had Spotlight completely fail sometimes, only for it to revive itself after a restart or two, or just at some random point in the future. 'Tis very strange.