[darcybaston]

Hey guys. I've tried dragging my system volume, second hard drive, and various folders from either or (to test) into the privacy window, and they won't show up. Is there a way to get Spotlight to "start from scratch" ?

[wataru]

On my system, every once in a while mdimport and LAServer like to freak out, taking up 100% of my CPU. While this happens, the privacy section of the Spotlight prefpane does not respond at all.

Open Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor and see if that's happening to you. If so, force quit mdimport and LAServer. Keep killing them until they start behaving.

[darcybaston]

Thanks wataru. The problem has survived reboots.

I found an Apple tech support document that told me a bit about 'mdutil'. By reading the man pages on mdutil I was able to turn indexing off, and back on again. Spotlight is now re-indexing. We'll see if this improves its behavior.