Indexing Service can extract both text and property information from files on the local host and on remote, networked hosts. The files can be simply members of a selected file system or part of a virtual Web hosted by, for example, Internet Information Services (IIS).

Indexing Service extracts the content by filtering—using filter components that understand a file's format. The format could include multi-language features such as international languages and locales. A filter component implements the IFilter interface, which supplies methods to read a file to extract text and properties. Windows 2000 and Microsoft Windows XP supply filters for Microsoft Office files, Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) files, Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension (MIME) messages, and plain-text files.

Indexing Service then merges the extracted information into catalogs of indexes for efficient searches. Indexing is the overall process of filtering, creating index entries, and merging them into catalogs.

The final step in the indexing process is creation of a catalog that contains a master index (and any temporary word lists and shadow indexes) storing words and their locations within a set of indexed documents. Subsequently, searching, or querying, the catalogs for particular word combinations uses the master index as well as word lists and shadow indexes to execute queries quickly and efficiently.

Windows 2000 and Windows XP include basic facilities for querying the Indexing Service catalog and for managing the state and properties of Indexing Service itself. These facilities include:

• When Indexing Service is running, Start/Search/For Files or Folders uses the Indexing Service catalog.
• The Indexing Service snap-in for the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) provides the means to start, stop, and pause Indexing Service, and to administer many of its properties, such as those defining its catalogs.

Windows Indexing Service creates indexes of the contents and properties of all files on local and network drives in order to increase file searching speed. But the downside is that your PC’s general performance will slow down because it has to index files continuously. So if you are not very particular about the slight increase in search speed or if you use a third party search engine like the Google Desktop Search or Copernic, then you can safely disable the indexing service. There are more than one ways of doing that.

In Windows XP, it’s possible to turn off indexing of some or all hard disk drive (HDD) one by one or to disable indexing service altogether (which will turn off indexing on all drives). Searching is still possible after disabling of indexing, albeit more slowly.

Turn off indexing on particular hard disk drive

• Open up “My Computer”

• Right click on the hard drive to disable indexing (i.e (C:) drive letter).

• Select Properties on the contextual menu.

• Click on General tab if it’s not already selected.

Disable the Indexing Service in Windows XP

• Open “Control Panel”, select “Administrator Tools”, and open Services applet. Alternatively, type services.msc in the Run text box from Start menu, and then hit Enter.

• Scroll down and locate Indexing Service service, and then double click on it.

• Click on Stop button to immediately stop the indexing service if the service status shows “Running.

• Under the “Startup Type”, select Disabled to permanently disable the indexing service so that it won’t run again.

• Click OK.

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