If you receive a Your searches might be slow because the index is not running or These results may be incomplete message In Explorer or see We’re getting search ready message in Start Menu when you search in Windows 11/10 using the Search, and your search results are stuck, then this post will help you.
Your searches might be slow because the index is not running
If you receive a Your searches might be slow because the index is not running or These results may be incomplete message In Explorer or see We’re getting search ready message in Start Menu when you search in Windows 11/10, try the following suggestions. Go through the entire list, create a system restore point first and see which one may apply to and help your system.
1] Restart Windows
Restart your computer and see if the problem resolves itself.
2] Check Indexing Status
Open File Explorer and right-click on your C Drive. Select Properties and under the General tab, uncheck the Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to the file properties box. Click Apply. Now check the box again and click Apply.
Read: Indexing is not running in Windows
3] Check if the Search Index is running
If you see a Your searches might be slow because the index is not working message, click on it to turn on the Index.
Run services.msc to open the Services Manager. Ensure that the Windows Search Service is set to Automatic and is running. You might want to read Windows Search Indexer is not working.
4] Rebuild Search Index and Restore Search Defaults
Rebuild the search index and restore search defaults and see if it helps.
5] Restart Windows Search Service
If the above did not help, try to do it manually. Run services.msc to open the Services Manager. Here stop the Windows Search service.
Now, using File Explorer, navigate to C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Search folder and delete all its contents. This is where the Windows Search Index is situated.
Restart your computer. On reboot, open Control Panel > Indexing Options from the Control Panel and ensure that indexing has started afresh.
6] User Folder Index Status
Make sure that your User folder ie. C:\Users<username> is included in the indexing. This post will show you how to add or remove folders to be indexed.
7] Turn off Search online
Turn off Search online and include web results and see if that works.
8] Run Search Troubleshooter
Run the Windows Search Troubleshooter and see if it helps.
9] Check the number of Start Menu Items
If you see We’re getting search ready message in Start Menu, check and see if your Start Menu has more than 512 items. If so, remove some.
How to remove Your searches might be slow because the index is not running message?
To disable the Your searches might be slow because the index is not running, Click to turn on the index message in Explorer, open File Explorer Options > Search tab and uncheck Don’t use the index when searching in file folders for system files (searches might take longer) option. Alternatively, you can open REGEDIT, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Search\Preferences and give WholeFileSystem DWORD a value of 1.
Why is my computer saying Getting Windows ready?
There are several reasons why you might get Getting ready message while starting your computer. For example, if you do not have a valid internet connection while setting up your PC for the first time, you will keep getting this message. On the other hand, Windows 11/10 shows the same when the computer doesn’t have a good configuration. However, if you get this message even after setting things up, it implies that multiple updates are being installed.
How do I fix Windows Search problem?
Depending on the actual problem, a few things need to be done. For example, you can simply restart your computer, check the Index status, verify whether the Search index is running, etc. You can also rebuild the search index and restore search defaults, restart the Windows Search service, etc.
Let us know if anything helped.
Related troubleshooting post: Taskbar Search not working in Windows.
