James E. O'Brien

The Indexing service can create an index of all the files and the content of many of those files in order to make finding things much faster. While Windows XP’s heart is in the right place, this sounds better than it is in practice. The Indexing service is more effective in its ability to slow down your computer than its ability to speed file searches. Here’s how to disable the Indexing service:

Click Start and click the Run command.
In the Open text box, type services.msc and click OK.
In the right pane of the Services console, find the Indexing Service. A quick way to get there is to click on the first entry in the right pane and then press the “I” key on the keyboard.
Double click on the Indexing Service entry.
In the Indexing Service Properties dialog box, click the down arrow in the Start type drop down list box and select Manual.
If the service is started, you can stop it now by clicking the Stop button.
You don’t need to restart the computer. The next time the computer starts, the Indexing service will not run automatically.