Question: You installed the File Services role and the Indexing role service on Windows Server 2008, and then you open Indexing Options from Control Panel and it displays the message "Indexing is not running" and all the options in the applet are grayed out except Advanced, and if you click Advanced it shows all the options as unavailable also. What's wrong?
Answer: You installed the wrong service! You should have added the Windows Search Service role service, not the Indexing Service role service because the Indexing Service role service is the legacy Indexing service that is only included for downlevel compatibility reasons. So uninstall the Indexing Service and install the Windows Search Service role service on the server. Note that you can't install both services on the same server.
Mitch Tulloch is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) and widely recognized expert on Windows administration, deployment and virtualization. For more tips by Mitch you can follow him on Twitter or friend him on Facebook.
