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Weird Spotlight Indexing Freakout?

K

komseban

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 27, 2010
86
0
I noticed my 2010 13" stock was overheating like mad for no reason even when it was just light use like internet surfing. So I checked out activity monitor and found some process called mdworker was consistently using 40-97% CPU. After some research I found out it was indexing for spotlight but that didn't make sense since I've had this laptop for almost 4 months now without this problem until like two weeks before. Needless to say, I don't even use spotlight; I use Alfred. But, turning off indexing saved my heat issue.

My main question is, has anyone else had this freak issue with mdworker using so much CPU randomly with no reason? I mean, I haven't added any new files or any large file transfers. Any explanations?
 
All you have to do is add any drives you don't want indexed to the Privacy tab in Spotlight preferences. Or simply let it reindex completely and it shouldn't do it again.
 
I had this issue last week. I turned off spotlight (by excluding my whole home drive) and the CPU usage returned to normal.

After a few days I re-enabled it, and after reindexing for hours it has been fine since.
 
Really you just just let it do its thing--it will stop indexing eventually. There is not necessarily a obvious reason why OS-X decides it needs to index a drive again--could even be a bad database. If you try to stop it, it will just try again unless you turn indexing off but there is no reason to do that unless the indexing really bugs you that much.
 
Well, I don't even use spotlight. I use Alfred for everything.
I was just curious as to why it freaked out so badly.
I guess I'll let it index overnight tonight.
But, good to know it doesn't just happen to me.
 
komseban said:
Well, I don't even use spotlight. I use Alfred for everything.
I was just curious as to why it freaked out so badly.
I guess I'll let it index overnight tonight.
But, good to know it doesn't just happen to me.
Click to expand...
Do you ever use Finder? Open or close dialog boxes? If so, you use Spotlight, since that's the engine behind Finder.
 
GGJstudios said:
Do you ever use Finder? Open or close dialog boxes? If so, you use Spotlight, since that's the engine behind Finder.
Click to expand...

^This I did not know.
8D;; I learn something new every day.
I better let it index overnight then. LOL
 
GGJstudios said:
All you have to do is add any drives you don't want indexed to the Privacy tab in Spotlight preferences. Or simply let it reindex completely and it shouldn't do it again.
Click to expand...

Why did indexing cause it to run hot ?
 
OP. Do you have a boot camp partition? make sure you remove it from your spotlight indexing. Or else when you do a spotlight search, for some reason spotlight continues to index no matter what you do.
 
I don't use bootcamp!
:D
I don't even know how to partition.
It's probably under Disk Utility. But I mean, my parents have a windows desktop so I don't see the need for using bootcamp. >w<
 
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