Start8 Search 100% CPU on Explorer.exe

I remember a post about this a bit back, which related to the Windows search indexing.  If I remember correctly (which I may not be), pausing/unpausing that should do it.

What do you mean by "pausing and unpausing" are you wanting us to type slower for it not to freak out LOL Anyhow I tried searching on a multi-core CPU and instead of it freezing and crashing explorer it will still work but my CPU will go up to 50% for the next 5 minutes than it will go back to 0%. The developers also need to know that there is a memory leak in the application as well because whenever I start typing if I sit there with data in the text box the memory usage of explorer.exe will keep growing till I run out of RAM on the system. The moment I close the search the ram will go down and the cpu will go from 100% to 0% after 5 minutes of not using the search feature.

Also it is important to know that I did not have this problem on the 0.9 Beta

Do you have the Windows Indexing service disabled?

From the description the search is taking a massive amount of cpu and memory and this would point to it not searching an indexed location.

I also cannot reproduce any leaks, I think it is simply the memory being allocated by the OS in order to perform the search which would explain why the memory allocation would decrease once you cancel the search.

Guess who was right? You were. Since I was using Windows Server 2012 I did what you said and ran a Google Search on "Windows Indexing Service", it appears that Microsoft no longer calls it that and it is called "Windows Search Service" (little different) so I enabled that under roles and bam it works perfectly without any memory leaks or CPU problems. Nice call.

Not sure if this is something you might want to add for the future but if I were you I would install this role/service automatically when a user installs Start8. Thanks for your help!

Just so you guys know, I originally wasn't going to buy this program; I was going to use a free alternative but since the support on here is just so great, and since you guys value quality I am going to be purchasing this program from you guys.

Thats great news, not only that you plan to purchase it, but also that we have the reason why you had such poor results narrowed down.

We will do some investigating into if we can mitigate the problem when the search service is disabled, or at least inform the user when it is so they do not get a bad impression.

Hello, I'm having the same problem. Whenever I try to search something from the start menu, explorer's CPU usage goes near 100% and stays there for a while (probably searching through the hard drive).

When I found this thread, I checked my Windows Search settings. Windows Search is enabled and is indexing a small bunch of folders. I thought it was probably continuing its search in non-indexed locations, so I added the whole C drive (no other drives in use) to the index and waited till indexing service was finished indexing it. Still had the same problem. Then I noticed that Windows still excluded a bunch of system directories from the indexer. After I added those too, it seemed to work faster and not cause explorer to hog CPU anymore. However, it makes no sense to have to index every single directory on the file system.

Windows 7 seems to only search from indexed locations when using the start menu. It would make sense if Start8 did the same, since indexing the whole drive seems pointless and wastes resources. And perhaps if Windows Search Service was completely disabled, it could search from some specific predetermined locations, such as Start Menu folder and/or wherever Windows 8 stores its application shortcuts.

A few things I've noticed so far:

* The icons used in "Recent" lists are only shown if the file still exists. Perhaps there could be some default icon to fill the empty space or the default icon for that file extension could be used then.

* When I open Start8 settings, "Default Theme" is always the selected theme, no matter which theme was actually in use when I launched Start8 settings.

One last question, are Control Panel sections going to be searchable in the next versions?

Generally it seems to be a great product - plenty of customization options. Makes the "touch-OS" usable on a PC. Currently I'm using the trial version, probably going to buy it.

It sounds like you may be using an older version as control panel sections are already searchable.

What beta number does the about page show?

Never mind, it seems that it searched for files before searching control panel stuff. But since I tested it when some directories weren't indexed, it got stuck on file search. Now it seems to show control panel sections just fine. Version is 0.98 BETA 3, although I guess doesn't matter anymore.

So, is it possible to make it only search indexed locations in future versions? I'm pretty sure telling everyone to add all drives to index and then also add the directories that were excluded is too much to ask for, considering that indexing everything isn't very resource friendly anyway.

It shouldn't be searching all those other locations at all.  Had you previously altered your windows search settings at all?

No I hadn't. I only know how to change the places it indexes. I have no idea if it is even possible to change the locations it generally searches in, but doesn't necessarily index. If it's possible, I suppose I could fix my problem by making those two lists match.

We are going to investigate it here on a box with a lot of files on the drive just in case there is an issue.  Every other report of slow performance has been with the search service disabled.

I am using Windows 8 RTM downloaded from DreamSpark. It's a VM, but I doubt it matters. Start8 is the only application currently installed. Before that I tried ViStart, but didn't like it and uninstalled it, not sure if it's possible that it messed up some search settings. I'll try installing W8 again and see if I have the same problem.

Thank you.

Created a new Windows 8 VM. Indeed this problem doesn't occur on a completely fresh install of Windows 8. I tried to recreate all configuration steps that I had taken before, still works properly. So either ViStart messed something up or I accidentally changed some weird settings. I guess this isn't a major issue then, although it would be interesting to know what caused this behavior.

I still have this problem, even when trying the latest beta 1.12.

Explorer.exe takes between 40 and 50% CPU when Start8 is running. Uninstalling solves the problem.

I've tried to modify the Search service, rebuilt the index, paused etc but nothing helps. The Search service cannot be stopped either, even though I'm admin. (I'm sure there's a way, but it's a useful service, I shouldn't have to!)

Any help in solving this problem? I consider it a very serious bug in Start8!!

Thanks.

Until this bug has been fixed, I use this software instead. Works fine!

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