Share via

Full Crawl never stops (the crawl is getting stuck) in SharePoint 2013

  • Article

Question

Tuesday, August 8, 2017 3:16 PM

We have a SharePoint farm with 2 App servers, 2 WFE and 1 DB server. Full crawl is not stopping (crawling for more than 20+ hours) for "Local SharePoint Sites" content source, getting stuck in between. Successful full crawl duration is around 8-10 hours. 

Approaches tried are as below:

1. Clear Cache in all App servers , Index Reset and start full crawl.

2. Restarting the servers.

The above approach resolves the issue for the time being and again occurs in 20 days or a month.

Please let us know if there is any fix to resolve the issue permanently.

All replies (3)

Wednesday, August 9, 2017 3:46 AM | 1 vote

Hi SwathiBhat, 

My experience is that is a crawl takes so long, it is probably stuck. There is no need for it to let it run. You can stop is manually and try to start (a mandatory) full crawl. Look at errors in the log. ULS log is at:       

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\15\LOGS

Restart SharePoint Server search 15

Restart SharePoint Timer Service

Restart IIS

For more detailed information, refer to the following article:

https://johnmhester.wordpress.com/2014/02/27/unable-to-stop-crawl-andor-index-reset-sharepoint-2013-search/

The last resort would be to recreate the search service application: 

http://blog.bugrapostaci.com/2015/02/18/clean-up-search-service-application-in-sharepoint-2013/

Best Regards, 

Lisa Chen 

Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help.
If you have feedback for TechNet Subscriber Support, contact [email protected]

Friday, September 8, 2017 8:23 AM

Thanks Lisa Chen, 

Deleting the existing SSA and recreating the search service application solved the crawl problem.

Friday, September 8, 2017 8:51 AM

Hi SwathiBhat, 

I am glad to hear that the issue is solved. 

Since your issue is solved, please remember to mark the reply as an answer if it helps. 

Have a nice day!
Best Regards, 

Lisa Chen

Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help.
If you have feedback for TechNet Subscriber Support, contact [email protected]