How to prevent Microsoft Windows Search Indexer from crashing Windows 10 Fall Creators Update?

Question

_{Friday, October 20, 2017 10:04 PM}

After updating a PC to Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, Microsoft Windows Search Indexer has crashed it quite a few times by keeping increasing its memory usage.  For example, at this moment, it uses almost 10 GB memory:

Could anyone offer a tip on how to prevent this?

Hong

All replies (14)

_{Saturday, October 21, 2017 5:47 AM}

you could take a performance trace at the time this happens, and upload it, as describe in **this wiki.
and please zip the trace file before uploading
**

_{Saturday, October 21, 2017 2:54 PM}

Thank you for the tip.  I will do it when the memory used by Microsoft Windows Search Indexer starts to skyrocketing again.  It has crashed the computer 3 times so far in the past two days.  I do not know what triggers it. The last time it happened, I stopped the service, the it seemed to exit gracefully by returning all the allocated memory. 

Hong

_{Saturday, October 21, 2017 5:46 PM}

you might have installed some 3rd party filter to index the content of file types.
Did you install some pdf reader?
or do you have large zip or mod files?

_{Saturday, October 21, 2017 9:24 PM | 1 vote}

I am not aware any 3rd party filter.  I have been using BackBlaze for over a year.  This started to happen only after W10 Fall Creators Update, but this could be just coincidence.

Yes, I have Adobe Reader on this machine.  I have had that for many years.

Hong

_{Friday, October 27, 2017 2:29 AM}

It has crashed a few times since my last post. It is not easy to catch it because the crash can happen very fast.

I have finally made a recording, and I think it should be good because how this took place:

1. I noticed CPU usage was high, so I opened Task Manager and found the memory used by Microsoft Windows Search Indexer was increasing quickly.
2. I started WPRUI.exe, but the computer had a sort of soft crash - all programs were closed and I was logged out, but the computer did not reboot.
3. I logged in, and found MWSI was still using high memory, and I started recording. I assume this is good because all other 10+ applications were closed, so we cannot blame any of them. The computer state was normal because only one of the three monitors could display.  I would have to restart the computer to fix this.  This has happened many times.

Here is the recording file. 

Hong

_{Friday, October 27, 2017 1:15 PM}

hm, I can not find stack for memory allocations, somehow the default settings for WPR seems to have changed (by Microsoft)

Can you tell me the size of the file "C:\Users\Hong\AppData\Local\Temp\WPR_initiated_WprApp_WPR System Collector.etl"
and exclude the files beneath
"C:\ProgramData\Backblaze\bzdata\bzfilelists\
from indexing

_{Friday, October 27, 2017 2:05 PM}

Thanks a lot for looking into it.

Unfortunately, I cannot find "C:\Users\Hong\AppData\Local\Temp\WPR_initiated_WprApp_WPR System Collector.etl"

The entire folder of ProgramData has already been excluded:

Hong

_{Friday, October 27, 2017 2:28 PM}

sorry, the etl file is create wy Performance Recorder, so has nothing to do with your problem.

_{Friday, October 27, 2017 2:29 PM}

I copied the wrong path.
can you look at this file size: "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Search\Data\Applications\Windows\Windows.edb"

_{Friday, October 27, 2017 2:42 PM}

Here is the file information:

It looks normal to me.

I used to have bloated edb file (the file size kept going up indefinitely, often reached 40+ GB before I reset it) chronically long time ago.   It seems that Microsoft fixed the problem. 

Hong

_{Tuesday, November 7, 2017 10:44 PM}

I have to stop Windows Search 4 or 5 times every day now. I have to do it quickly every time when I sense it starts to consume a lot of CPU power.  Otherwise, the crash is inevitable, and reboot would be the only remedy.

Hong

_{Wednesday, November 8, 2017 4:15 PM}

as I could not find anything from the tracefile, you could look for loaded 3rd party dll's in the process.
start Powershell as Administrator, then run:

get-process searchindexer -Module | where Company -ne "Microsoft Corporation"

for me this returns nothing (all modules are by microsoft)

_{Wednesday, November 8, 2017 9:09 PM}

Thanks a lot for all the help.

It is interesting that the indexer acted up again while I was typing this reply, and it crashed Chrome.  I was quick enough again to stop it from forcing a reboot.

Anyway, it returns nothing for me too:

I guess that I will just get used to this until Microsoft fixes it.

Hong

_{Saturday, November 11, 2017 8:34 PM}

I can stop WSearch service most of the time when this happens, but not occasionally.

I have to kill the process to prevent crash.  I am wondering if there is a way to find out which services depend on it so they may offer a clue about the problem.

Hong