What's recommended as far as Windows Search/Indexing?

[Coldblackice]

Is there a general consensus amongst Windows users as to what to do with Windows Search/Indexing? Obviously Everything is better at ...everything, which is all I use, but if you turn off all of Windows search/indexing, then you don't get start-menu populating and other minor misc. things.

I'm also a bit confused as to how Windows handles it all, as it seems convoluted: separate programs / services/ UWP apps, all tied to searching+indexing. It would be nice if it was all contained in a single non-UWP program/service!

Recommendations? What all do you guys disable, turn off, minimize, etc. regarding Windows Search/Indexing? And what do you set in contrast with your Everything (as far as its indexing/journaling)?

[horst.epp]

Searching is completely done using Everything, independent of the file manager (I have several of them).
I let Everything index the content of a small set of files and of course index files of the whole system.
Windoes system indexer is set to index the content of a larger set of files.
Query the Windows index is made by using Everything.

[raccoon]

I've personally disabled the Search Indexing service in Windows 7, which as you say sadly disables the Start Menu search. But that already stopped working years ago for whatever reason.

An alternative is to edit the properties of every drive/volume to disable the attribute "[ ] Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties." You can tell if this has worked by showing the Attributes column in everything and then typing the search keyword root: and observe the "I" (capital i) attribute on each volume. I had also done this for every file and folder on my media drives, while also setting them to read-only and turning off "file is ready for archiving" allowing me to detect newly copied/modified files later.

[horst.epp]

I've personally disabled the Search Indexing service in Windows 7, which as you say sadly disables the Start Menu search. But that already stopped working years ago for whatever reason.

An alternative is to edit the properties of every drive/volume to disable the attribute "[ ] Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties." You can tell if this has worked by showing the Attributes column in everything and then typing the search keyword root: and observe the "I" (capital i) attribute on each volume. I had also done this for every file and folder on my media drives, while also setting them to read-only and turning off "file is ready for archiving" allowing me to detect newly copied/modified files later.

Why do you disable it completely ?
You can define what dirs to index in Windows search indexer.

[raccoon]

horse.epp, when using Windows 7 or any old software, it is good advice to disable and delete all possible attack surfaces. This means disabling and deleting all Microsoft software and services that are either obsolete or no longer being used for anything.

It's also strange that the service likes to launch the SearchIndexer.exe process whenever an internet connection is established. I didn't ask for it to run, so I obligingly obliterated it.