How can I get Spotlight to actually work?

Have installed Lion 10.7.4 on my 2011 MBP and have been impressed with it until I tried to search a folder. The spotlight search pane in the top right corner of the finder windows doesn't respond, nothing happens. The spotlight in the top right corner of the desktop works but this is useless for searching for files on my NAS server or anything on my network. I've tried using the spotlight preferences privacy trick to reindex locations but that doesn't work. I've also tried a few different terminal commands and third party software to delete the cache, none of which work. Are Apple aware of this problem and is their a proper update fix planned?  It's a major dysfunction.

The problem is caused by either a corrupt file or 3rd party conflict on your system. Not a bug I'm afraid.
Try this first. Go to
 > System Preferences > Users & Groups | Login Items
Select everything in the list and hit the minus '-' button underneath the list to remove all items.
Restart your mac and test.

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