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affectmaven · Aug 28, 2006, 09:29 PM

Since upgrading my iMacG5 to 10.4.7 Spotlight has become unreliable. For days on end it fails to respond at all when clicked, then it works for a couple of hours and goes back on strike. I've repaired permissions, run Onyx, done everything I can think of. Suggestions?

cla · Aug 29, 2006, 05:57 PM

Trashed the Spotlight prefs + indices?

affectmaven · Aug 29, 2006, 07:20 PM

Originally Posted by cla

Trashed the Spotlight prefs + indices?

I'm too much of a novice to understand whether this is an instruction or a reprimand. Help differently.

cla · Aug 30, 2006, 04:40 AM

I'm sorry. There are a couple of suggestions in this thread on how to go about...

affectmaven · Sep 1, 2006, 06:07 PM

It has been 48 hours since I took a suggestion in the supplied thread (removed the Spotlight folder from the hard drive) and rebooted. Spotlight refuses to turn on.

cla · Sep 1, 2006, 06:18 PM

Did you try this:

In terminal -

sudo mdutil -E /

This will delete the existing index and cause Spotlight to re-index
your startup drive in the background. You can also re-index other
drives by using their names i.e. /Volumes/MacHD.

?

affectmaven · Sep 3, 2006, 02:01 PM

I entered that command in Terminal about 36 hours ago and Spotlight still doesn't respond. Clicking on the . Spotlight-V100 folder for "Get info," it says "Size ___KB on disk (___ bytes)" and "more info" shows a pinwheel Fetching. That, incidentally, is what it has shown no matter what I've done so far.

cla · Sep 3, 2006, 03:04 PM

Is the behaviour specific to your user account, or any user account?

affectmaven · Sep 3, 2006, 07:49 PM

I'm the only user and the only account.

chabig · Sep 3, 2006, 08:34 PM

My recommendation would be to download and rerun the 10.4.7 combo updater. Notice I said the "combo" updater:

http://www.apple.com/support/downloa...7comboppc.html

Chris

CharlesS · Sep 3, 2006, 10:40 PM

Originally Posted by affectmaven

I'm the only user and the only account.

So create a new account in System Preferences, log on under that account, and tell us if that account also has the problem. If it doesn't, then the problem is somewhere in your main user account; otherwise, it's something deeper.

I'd also like to know if it's all of SystemUIServer that's locked up, or just Spotlight - in other words, do the other menu extras work (such as the menu bar clock, the volume menu, the other little menus in the upper right, etc.), or do they also beachball when you click on them?

affectmaven · Sep 5, 2006, 08:17 PM

It is now 36 hours since I reinstalled 10.4.7 combo updater as suggested by Chris, and still Spotlight does not respond. Everything elst on the top bar of my desktop works just fine --- speaker volume, time/date, Americn Flag, Aairport, Bluetooth, etc. I'd like to complain that the weather gizmo is stuck on rain, but that ain't the machine's fault.

As best I can determine, the Spotlight folder continues to show the pinwheel and that it is fetching, but the folder contains no data. Someone suggested that the problem must be "deeper." Where does that lead me?

CharlesS · Sep 5, 2006, 10:22 PM

You didn't create a new user account and try Spotlight there. Please do that.

affectmaven · Sep 7, 2006, 06:17 PM

You were right! It took a lot of error and trial to accomplish, but I did set up a second account that when activated had a working Spotlight. (As a psychiatrist, this business of having a double identity is somewhere between scary and embarrassing.) What has this taught us? Does it instruct me how to get Spotlight working on my "real" identity?

CharlesS · Sep 7, 2006, 06:48 PM

It means that we've just narrowed down the problem to being somewhere in your home folder. Now we have to figure out what file in there is causing the problem.

First thing I'd probably try would be trashing the com.apple.spotlight.plist file that's in ~/Library/Preferences.

cla · Sep 8, 2006, 12:50 AM

Originally Posted by affectmaven

You were right! It took a lot of error and trial to accomplish, but I did set up a second account that when activated had a working Spotlight. (As a psychiatrist, this business of having a double identity is somewhere between scary and embarrassing.) What has this taught us? Does it instruct me how to get Spotlight working on my "real" identity?

As a psychiatrist you should know that the easiest solution is to simply supress your real identity, and go with the other one that you like better... :>

affectmaven · Sep 8, 2006, 08:13 PM

I found the com.apple.spotlight.plist folder in the new identity, but there doesn't seem to be any in the original identity's Library-Preferences folder. What next?

CharlesS · Sep 8, 2006, 08:25 PM

Here are a couple more things you can try moving out of the user folder, to see if it makes a difference. In each case you want to log out and log back in immediately after moving the files/folders.

Library/Caches/Metadata
Library/Spotlight

affectmaven · Sep 9, 2006, 07:35 PM

curiouser and curioser. Nothing happened when I moved the Metadata folder out or when I moved it back.

There is no Library/Spotlight folder.

Still working in the original identity, Library/Preferences did have a com.apple.spotlight.plist folder this one time I looked, so I moved it out to the desktop as per a previous suggestion. Spotlight then worked for a while, but when I logged out and then back in, Spotlight didn't work and there is no trace of the com.apple.spotlight.plist folder that I'd placed on the desktop for safekeeping.

So: there is no Spotlight folder in the Library, and no Spotlight plist in the Preference folder. And Spotlight doesn't respond.

affectmaven · Sep 11, 2006, 10:59 AM

A friend pointed out that I can accomplish everything Spotlight promises by using Finder. "Probably they'll either fix Spotlight in Leopard or get rid of it entirely. Everybody complains about it." He expressed sympathy for the hours I've spent trying to make it work and at my disappointment.

This brings up another heresy. A year ago I shifted from the Windows/PC world because my Dell PCs broke down so often, and because so many people told me that the Mac is "intuitive" and "much easier to learn." I know nobody familiar with both systems who really belives this. The aesthetics of the Mac line are unquestionably greater than anything in the PC world, and when these machines work properly, they are effecient, effective, and fun. But they are nothing more than machines, and the greater the penetrance into the computer market made by Apple, the more we are going to see problems associated with them.

Thanks for the help so far with the Spotlight problem. Like all of us, I look forward to the release of Leopard and to the further sophistication of this still primimtive industry.

chabig · Sep 11, 2006, 11:13 AM

Originally Posted by affectmaven

A friend pointed out that I can accomplish everything Spotlight promises by using Finder. "Probably they'll either fix Spotlight in Leopard or get rid of it entirely. Everybody complains about it." He expressed sympathy for the hours I've spent trying to make it work and at my disappointment.

The feature to which you refer uses Spotlight to do the work. It's not a separate feature. That kind of thinking comes from the PC world where the word "integration" isn't well understood by programmers and system designers, but only my Microsoft marketeers. You can be sure that Spotlight is an integral part of OS X and will not be going anywhere. I hardly think that "everybody complains about it". It just works. Perhaps the fact that you've spent hours trying to make it work is part of your problem. There isn't anything you should do to make it work. It just works.

Do you think Microsoft is going to exit the OS business just because their software sucks?

This brings up another heresy. A year ago I shifted from the Windows/PC world because my Dell PCs broke down so often, and because so many people told me that the Mac is "intuitive" and "much easier to learn." I know nobody familiar with both systems who really belives this. The aesthetics of the Mac line are unquestionably greater than anything in the PC world, and when these machines work properly, they are effecient, effective, and fun. But they are nothing more than machines, and the greater the penetrance into the computer market made by Apple, the more we are going to see problems associated with them.

Whatever are you talking about. Are you suggesting that the PCs problems exist solely because of its market share? That's ridiculous! I am familiar with both systems and Macs are more intuitive, hands down. The PC's problems stem from faulty system design caused by an mindset based on marketing, not stability.

CharlesS · Sep 11, 2006, 01:05 PM

Originally Posted by affectmaven

A friend pointed out that I can accomplish everything Spotlight promises by using Finder. "Probably they'll either fix Spotlight in Leopard or get rid of it entirely. Everybody complains about it." He expressed sympathy for the hours I've spent trying to make it work and at my disappointment.

This brings up another heresy. A year ago I shifted from the Windows/PC world because my Dell PCs broke down so often, and because so many people told me that the Mac is "intuitive" and "much easier to learn." I know nobody familiar with both systems who really belives this. The aesthetics of the Mac line are unquestionably greater than anything in the PC world, and when these machines work properly, they are effecient, effective, and fun. But they are nothing more than machines, and the greater the penetrance into the computer market made by Apple, the more we are going to see problems associated with them.

Thanks for the help so far with the Spotlight problem. Like all of us, I look forward to the release of Leopard and to the further sophistication of this still primimtive industry.

The problem is most likely a corrupted preference file or cache somewhere. The fact that it's working in a new user account proves this. We just need to find out what it is. The equivalent problem in Windows would be a Registry problem, and if you think that would be any more fun to troubleshoot, well, in many cases Windows doesn't just let you delete Registry keys and have them automatically rebuild. What we'd probably end up doing would be reformatting the hard drive.

Anyway, here's a new thing to try. Go to home/Library/Preferences and home/Library/Preferences/ByHost. In each folder, delete any file whose name starts with "com.apple.systemuiserver". If there is any "com.apple.spotlight", delete that too. Immediately log out and back in and see what happens.

If that doesn't work, look in Library/Logs/CrashReporter and look for any crash logs for any of the following processes: SystemUIServer, mds, mdimport, mdimportserver, anything else that starts with "md". If any of these files exist and contain a crash with a timestamp that is later than the last time you rebooted, they may contain some clues as to what's going on.

affectmaven · Sep 11, 2006, 07:54 PM

Does Chabig's peculiiar response offer a clue to my problem? If indeed, as he suggests, the search engines in Spotlight and Finder are identical, then does the fact that Finder retrieves loads of good stuff about whatever I enter into its oval search window suggest anything about the problem for which I asked help? For example, I entered a somewhat unusual name for which it found every conceivable placement in the body of long articles and thoroughly random documents. The iteration of Spotlight in the upper right corner of my desktop remains useless.

CharlesS · Sep 11, 2006, 08:51 PM

Yes, the Finder search uses Spotlight. That's why I recommended deleting the SystemUIServer stuff (since SystemUIServer owns the search menu in the upper right).

Did you try the stuff I suggested in my previous post?