Sunday, January 14, 2007

Windows Desktop Search removal

Windows Desktop Search took over my computer. This resulted in 20-30 minute times coming off standby, and a collapse in battery performance (likely due to hard drive spinning). MS vehemently states Windows Desktop Search will have no impact on performance, they are wrong. Every time I logged out and logged back in was torture. I removed it, the problem is gone. Now, maybe it was just a coincidence. I suspect they are saying ‘no impact on legacy desktop systems’. The problems were on a mobile IBM T40. The install occured as an update to the office productivity suite, outlook 2007 to be exact. Office 2007, in a seperate entry, i'd exclaim that I truly love, the ribbons truly rock! However, Windows Desktop Search has got to go for now.

To remove: Control Panel->Add/Remove Programs (wait 5 minutes for list to populate), go to Windows Desktop Search and select Remove. It is not under the Microsoft list of programs, its down lower in the alphabetical listing under 'W' for Windows.

2 comments:

Through_My_Eyes said...

Did you run into a problem with other applications? When I run the Add/Remove Programs for WDS it comes back with a huge list of programs that may not operate properly if WDS is removed.

adam lake said...

ah....the threat tactic. 'if you remove this software, lots of other stuff will break'.

Outlook 2007 wants to use WDS. If you don't have it installed it reverts to the old painfully slow previous search tech available in older versions of outlook. that is the only one i have found so far that actually matters.