spotlight randomly stopped working

[biohazard6969]

for some reason spotlight just stopped working, i booted up my imac and logged in, everything else seeems to work fine, i click the spotlight icon and start typing but it won't start searching, same thing with the spotlight window. but if i do a cmd "F" search in finder it will search but its messed up and can't find some things. for example i type in "disc utility" becaseu i was hoping that repairing permissions would fix it (it ididn't) but it wouldn't show the app. i'm sure its somethign relatively simple i just can't seem to figure it out. any help is much appreciated

 

[trainguy77]

Try this in terminal:

sudo mdutil -E /

It will rebuild the spotlight index from scratch. This will only work on the boot volume. If you have more drives mention it and i will get you the command for those.

 

[mad jew]

If you're allergic to Terminal, then you should be able to rebuild your database in System Preferences. Simply head to the Spotlight pane, add your hard disk to the Privacy tab and then remove it. Whichever method you use, it'll take a little while to rebuild depending on the amount of data it must index.

If rebuilding the database does nothing, then try trashing the preference file. There should be a file named com.apple.spotlight.plist in your Preferences folder. Drag this to the Trash and restart, then maybe rebuild the database again. Of course, don't bother with this if the first rebuild worked anyway.