Spotlight endless

What's wrong with spotlight???
It displays not " Indexing About 58660324 hours remaining".
I tried to reset Spotlight, to remove the drive from scanning preferences.
But once all back as before, it will scan my hard disk for hours endlessly.
Any clue?
Thanks

+1 Me too!
I stopped it when it quoted 2000+ hours - then it failed to shutdown - I'm on a Mac Pro - spotlight doesn't index endlessly when my other drives are removed - so i'm presuming it's a broken hard drive. I'll Backup & Zero it - to see if that works.
I thought it was faulty ram - but I think it makes sense that it's a faulty drive. - my crashes were when- opening finder windows - going to save dialogues, opening disk utility... and on shutdown...
It also crashed when trying to force quite spotlight from Activity Monitor & also when running the 10.5.6 combo updater.
I've removed it now - ran combo update, then softwareupdat ( with permission repairs in the middle) and whilst i've not done any heavy lifting yet - it seems to be OK.
if anyone can add to my "unqualified" diagnosis - please, please do. i'd like my thoughts confirmed - or beaten down...

Similar Messages

Cannot disable spotlight - endlessly indexing

Hello all,
I cannot disable spotlight - it is endlessly indexing. I have dropped the main drive into Provacy under Spotlight. I have dropped my other 3 drives there as well. I have taken them out and reurned them many times - no change. I repaired disk permissions many times - no change. I downloaded and installed the 10.6.8 Combo update - no change. It keeps indexing and says: Indexing _____________'s Mac Pro. And the estimated time is not there - just that barber pole. And I believe it is affecting my applications - I am having major problems with Avid's Pro Tools 9.0.6.
Is there anything else that I can try? I do own Spotless but I stopped using it over a year ago - it didn't seem to do anything more than what I could do using the Privacy option. It it possible that Spotless might be able to do something that I cannot?
Any ideas would be welcome.

Maybe some file is corrupt in such a way to hang up spotlight. Is it possible for you to run with just your boot drive with the other 3 drives physically removed from the machine? See if it loops that way. If so something may be going on with the boot drive. If not, start adding the removed drives back one-by-one until it gets caught in the loop again.
If this method works at least you can narrow it down to a specific drive. Of course that won't tell you what the problem is on that drive but you at least have a single drive to concentrate on as opposed to 4 of them.
Since you already tried adding these drives to privacy I am not going to suggest the mdutil command to erase the indices (-E) or flag for no indices (-i). I don't think it will change anything and of course won't resolve why it is looping.
Also note that this problem is not unique. Look at the right side of this page for More Like This.
Related articles:
Turning Off Spotlight
The X Lab: Spotlight Tips

Spotlight endlessly indexing

I recently defragmented my hard drive, and since I did that, Spotlight has not been working properly. When I start up my computer, Spotlight runs fine, but after about 30 minutes, it only says "Indexing Hard Drive." I figured, fair enough. But I left it going for over 14 hours, and it still hasn't even started. It has looked like the link for the past 14 hours, and won't go past this stage. I've rebooted in safe mode, and done everything I can to get Spotlight to work, but to no avail. I have Mac OSX 10.6.4. My hard drive is 500 GB at 5400 RPM. Any suggestions?
Screenshot: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7739498/Screen%20shot%202010-06-28%20at%201.46.24%20PM.p ng

You are a lifesaver. Fixed it perfectly.
For those who might be having this problem, here's exactly what I did.
1. Opened "System Preferences" and went to "Spotlight"
2. Went to the "Privacy" tab
3. Clicked the plus sign at the bottom of the list (Add)
4. Added "Macintosh HD" to the list
5. Quit System Preferences and pressed +Space to see if the problem was fixed (it wasn't)
6. Restarted my computer and logged in
7. Pressed +Space to see if Spotlight was indexing (It wasn't, but that's normal: it usually work for about 20 minutes before starting to try to index)
8. Went to System Preferences-->Spotlight-->Privacy, selected Macintoish HD and pressed the minus sign
9. Pressed +Space to see if Spotlight worked (It was giving me the same message it was before)
10. Closed Spotlight and waited about 40 seconds
11. Pressed +Space again, and Spotlight was about a tenth of the way through indexing
12. Waited about 10 minutes
And voilá, Spotlight has been working ever since. Thank you so much.

Spotlight endlessly indexing and mdworker process using lot of cpu

Hi, I just did Archive&Install from Tiger to Leopard, applied 10.5.1 and now...
...since THREE DAYS Spotlight is indexing giving strange values for time remaining (2.134.545.673 hours).
Like I found in other threads, I have the mdworked process absorbing a lot of cpu power and, from Console, maybe it's crashing repeatedly. I made private of lots of folders but the problem is still there.
Any other idea?
How can I find which file/application is freezing mdworker and making Spotlight so unuseful?
Thanks in advance
Tampano

I don't know. How much data is on your HD? Simplest thing to do is use the Terminal command mdutil to erase the current indexes and rebuild them. This should do it:
*sudo mdutil -E /Volumes/(asterisk)*
Launch the Terminal.app in /Applications/Utilities/, copy & paste that command into the window, hit the return key, enter your admin password at the Password: prompt (carefully because nothing shows up on the screen), and hit the return key again. That should erase the indexes and rebuild them.

Spotlight endlessly estimating indexing time

I see this has been an issue with several others. I've tried a few of the suggested UNIX commands in terminal, but no luck. This morning I reinstalled Snow Leopard plus the combo update and it's still "estimating index time" Prior to the reinstall, I did use Snow Leopard Cache Cleaner to delete the indexes, but I'm thinking it still shouldn't take hours to estimate the index time regardless. Any suggestions as to what I can do at this point?

Seems to be indexing now. Hopefully this will be the end of it!

Why is spotlight indexing endlessly?

For days now, I haven't been able to search for anything using spotlight because I get the message, "Spotlight will be available as soon as the contents of your have been indexed. Estimated indexing time" ................. . It gives me nothing. Just works and works seemingly endlessly doing seemingly nothing.
Help?

Greetings,
Are you running BootCamp or do you have any non-Macformated drives attached? http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3640
If that is not the case something may have gone wrong in the indexing process and it is not finishing.
SafeBoot: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1455
Restart as normal
Reindex: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2409
Leave the computer on and allow it to complete. Keep in mind that the more files you have on the system, the longer this will take so it may need to run overnight.
Hope that helps.

Spotlight constantly indexing and Time Machine endlessly preparing backup

Hi,
I have a Macbook Pro 5,5 and Mac OS X 10.8.4
Lately I noticed that Spotlight was pretty much constantly indexing, so I went to "System Preferences/Spotlight/Privacy" and I dragged my HD there to prevent Spotlight from indexing it. Then rebooted my laptop and removed my HD again, which caused my Spolight to start indexing again.
After a night of indexing, everything seemed to be working fine. Nevertheless, today Spotlight is once again constantly indexing my computer, and the bar just won't go beyond "Estimating Indexing Time". What could I do to solve this issue?
Related to this, I assume, is my inability to backup through Time Machine. I feel like Time Machine is waiting for Spotlight to complete its indexing in order to start its backup-job, is that correct?
Thanks for your help,
Sander

If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.
Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
syslog -k Sender mdworker -o -k Sender mds | grep -v boxd | tail | open -f -a TextEdit
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C).
Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
Paste into the Terminal window (command-V).
The command may take a noticeable amount of time to run. Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign (“$”) to appear.
A TextEdit window will open with the output of the command. If the command produced no output, the window will be empty. Post the contents of the TextEdit window (not the Terminal window), if any — the text, please, not a screenshot. The title of the window doesn't matter, and you don't need to post that.

Endless Spotlight indexing

My Mac Pro 8-core has been indexing for the last 3 days or so non-stop. At least every time I go to use it, I get the "Spotlight will be available as soon as the contents of your computer have been indexed." I've never seen indexing take this long before -- in fact I've never even noticed it for more than a minute or three. Anything I can do to abort this index process? -- I have a feeling it's hung somewhere.

Hi gimbo70 & welcome to forums
Go to System Preferences/Spotlight and add your iDisk to the exclusion list/window.
Close prefs, then re-open and remove your iDisk from the exclusion window. This should stop and restart normal indexing on that particular volume.
See these articles/links for more info:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TA22902?viewlocale=en_US
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1635504&tstart=795
http://www.wwco.com/~wls/blog/2007/08/29/rebuilding-spotlights-index-on-os-x-man ually/
If it were me, I wouldn't entertain an indexed iDisk...

Endless spotlight indexing on my idisk

it's about a week that spotlight it's indexing my iDisk.
I have my idisk on the desktop with active syncro so i have a proper copy of the idisk on the desktop.
Using cocktail i erased the index for the main(system) disk and let spotlight indexing it again but it started again with the message "indexing idisk estimated time...".
My i disk its about 800mb and the system disk is 500gb just 4gb full.
thanks for now.

Hi gimbo70 & welcome to forums
Go to System Preferences/Spotlight and add your iDisk to the exclusion list/window.
Close prefs, then re-open and remove your iDisk from the exclusion window. This should stop and restart normal indexing on that particular volume.
See these articles/links for more info:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TA22902?viewlocale=en_US
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1635504&tstart=795
http://www.wwco.com/~wls/blog/2007/08/29/rebuilding-spotlights-index-on-os-x-man ually/
If it were me, I wouldn't entertain an indexed iDisk...

Spotlight Indexing, Systemstats, Missing File, All After Mavericks Upgrade

Dear Mac Support Communities,
The upgrade to OS X 10.9.4 has crippled my computer.
My main question is: should I reformat, or should I wait for a patch to come out to solve whatever is wrong with Mavericks? I explain below.
Spotlight is constantly indexing. The mdworker is all over the place on the Activity Monitor—4% and then it explodes to 85% of CPU usage. Systemstats kicks in randomly (connected to spotlight perhaps?) and eats up 90% of my CPU and 3gigs of RAM. Time Machine takes AGES to backup.
I have not been able to stop Spotlight's endless indexing. I have moved my hard drive and my Time Machine backup into the 'private' filter in 'Spotlight Preferences.' I have also tried the "sudo mdutil -a -i off" trick to stop indexing altogether. But Spotlight Indexing goes "off" and then automatically turns "on" in Terminal. Spotlight carries on, and the computer performance is choppy.
I've run disk repair. First, I repaired permissions. Then I verified and attempted to repair the the hard drive. There is a missing file apparently, and I therefore must reformat. This is very first issue I've ever had with the hard drive since I bought the computer. Considering how awful Mavericks has been—I have been reading other Support Communities posts—I'm nervous about something going wrong, or that all these problems will persist after the reformat.
All of this has occurred three days after my upgrade to to OS X 10.9.4. I have heard of numerous people having problems with Mavericks. All similar problems concerning missing files, haywire spotlight, systemstats devouring any remaining CPU power and memory space, and slow Time Machine back-ups.
Anyone with the same problems? Care to theorize some solutions?
I have a late 2008, 15inch MacBook Pro., 2.53 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3, running OS X 10.9.4 (13E28).
Cheers! I appreciate the help.

Older Macs have more troubles under Mavericks. Considering the age of your Mac, it's not uncommon to start have hardware issues like drive failure.
To repair the drive you must boot from the Recovery Drive.
Boot into the Recovery Drive by holding down Command R when restarting.
Run Repair Drive and Repair Permissions using Disk Utility in Recovery.***
Next Reset Home Directory Permissions and ACLs following directions here This will serve two purposes. It will reset YOUR permissions. Not the same as Disk Utility reset permissions and it will cause Spotlight to re-index your drive when restarting.
Restart
Download and run the combo updater to refresh your OS X files.
OS X Mavericks 10.9.4 Update (Combo)
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1755
MORE INFO ON WHY RUNNING COMBO FIXES ISSUES
Apple updates available from the Software Update application are incremental updates. Delta updates are also incremental updates and are available from Apple Downloads (software updates are generally smaller than delta updates). The Combo updates contain all incremental updates and will update files that could have become corrupted.
Combo updaters will install on the same version as they're applying--no need to roll back or do a clean install.
"Delta" updaters can only take you from one version to the next. For example: 10.9.3 to 10.9.4. If somehow the 10.9.3 is missing something it should have, and that something isn't changed between 10.9.3 and 10.9.4 it will still be stale after the delta update.
***If Disk Utility is unable to repair you will have to copy your data to an external drive first. Reformatting will erase the drive. You should have a backup regardless, if your data is important to you. Just like a seat belt and an air bag protect you in different ways when driving, you need both Time Machine and a clone for full protection. If you don't have an external drive for backup, I can give you some suggestions to get you started.
Both of these applications can be used to create a clone.
SuperDuper! http://www.shirt-pocket.com/
CCC http://www.bombich.com/download.html

Developing: Endless loop in Adobe Bridge with and Adobe Drive CMIS Connector

Hi
Currently I’m implementing a CMIS-Server for the dam system of my company, using the apache chemistry framework. One of the main requirements is that adobe drive works with it.
At the moment I implemented only the navigation services (getChildren, getObject, …) and the repository services and test them against adobe drive. It’s already possible to navigate through folders and read assets with ad4 and the finder. So 3 days ago I installed adobe bridge (CS6) and test my server again.
My test environment is very easy.
root(1 object)->test1(0 objects; empty)
First I’m opening my repository with adobe drive and then I switch to bridge and connect it. Bridge shows me the folder test1 with no errors. So I double-click it and now bridge is in an endless loop. The notification switch between ‘Keine anzuzeigenden Elemente’(No elements to show) and ‘Einen Moment bitte, die Suche läuft …’(Searching, please wait …). This only happens in bridge. When I open the folder with the finder it just works, without the loop.
So I logged all requests, which were send by adobe drive, and get this list.
Connecting with adobe drive
getRepositoryInfos
getTypeChildren (null) -> all basetypes
getTypeDecendants (cmis:document)
getTypeChildren (null) -> all basetypes (Why two times?)
getTypeDecendants (cmis:document) (Why two times?)
getRepositoryInfos (Why two times?)
getObjectByPath (/.hidden)
getObjectByPath (/.hidden)
getObjectByPath (/.hidden) (Why so often?)
getObjectByPath (/DCIM)
getObjectByPath (/mach_kernel)
getObjectByPath (/.Spotlight-V100)
getObjectByPath (/.metadata_never_index)
getObjectByPath (/.metadata_never_index_unless_rootfs)
getObjectByPath (/.metadata_never_index)
getObjectByPath (/mach_kernel)
getObjectByPath (/.metadata_never_index_unless_rootfs)
getChildren (cmis:folder,0) (rootfolder) returning only one element (test1)
getObjectParents(cmis:folder,127) (test1) returning the rootfolder
getObjectByPath (/.hidden)
getObjectByPath (/mach_kernel) …
Open the Cmis repository in bridge and doubleclick the repository
getChildren (cmis:folder,0) (rootfolder) returning only one element (test1)
getObjectParents(cmis:folder,127) (test1) returning the rootfolder
Then I double click the test1 folder
getObject(cmis:folder,127)(test1)
getChildren(cmis:folder,127) -> empty list
… (endless loop)
I already checked getObject and getChildren against a reference implementation (FileShare Repository of apache Chemistry) and it returns exactly the same structure. Only the name and the timestamps are different. So my second though was to check the repository capabilities and as well they are both equal. Now I’m a little bit desperate because I spend already 3 days in try and error bugfixing but nothing worked. So here are my questions.
Is there a logfile for bridge because I thing this refreshing happens after an exception. I already checked the adobe drive log and it contains only asset not found errors for (e.g mach_kernel …).
In which circumstances does bridge reloads a folder?
Debugging of adobe drive: I already read http://forums.adobe.com/message/3928595 but it doesn’t work in AD4 any more, I only get info/error/fatal messages.(I changed the log4j config files in AD4ServiceManager.) Does something changed or did I forget something?
Why does AD4 make 2 or more times the exact same request? (Look table above).
I hope my English is good enough to understand.
Thanks

After two months I'm a little bit smarter so I can answer some of my question by my own.
No there is no logfile for bridge, but I was able to debug the scriptcode from the ad plugin, which is installed in bridge.
If an error occures in the plugin
I was able to decompile the cmis connector. That helps a lot when ad logs with weird exceptions.
Because AD maps the actions of the filebrowser(finder,explorer) to cmis and this one does sometimes the exact action two or more times.
Unfortunately is wasn't able to fix my main problem, but I found a workaround to use cmis in bridge. I deactivated the ad plugin in bridge and after that action, bride display the cmis volume as normal volume. Sadly some actions like to manage relationships etc. are with this workaround not usable but for me this is alright.

IMac 24" 3.06Ghz crashes intermittently, causes endless restarts

Hi All,
I have a 24-inch, 3.06 Ghz Intel iMac that has been crashing intermittently for months now. The crashes seem to happen at mostly random times, but occur more frequently during processor-intensive tasks. Specifically, the crashes almost always happen when I'm playing a game (World of Warcraft), doing a system update thatbrequires a restart or doing more than one thing at a time in iTunes (syncing my iPad, listening to music and downloading multiple podcasts).
When the crashes happen, everything freezes up and I get the spinning beach ball. No applications are responsive and I'm unable to bring up the Force Quit window. At this point, I have no choice but to do a hard shutdown (by holding the power button). For the next several minutes after the shutdown, starting up the computer causes a series of endless restarts on a blank black screen. The only way to get the computer to start up normally again is to leave it off for a few minutes. Then it starts up without a problem.
I'm stumped. Thank you all for any help you can provide.
- Mike

The CPU is fine. The HDD is pretty warm - 120F would be more comfortable (mine is 123F with nothing much going on), but the fan is trying to keep it down so the system is doing what it should.
If your HD stays that hot constantly, rather than only when being very active (reindexing Spotlight, running a backup, or other continuous activity) then I'd start to worry some. Generally HDs don't like going over 130F.

Spotlight not working under 10.6.6- reindexed several times.

Spotlight is not showing up results as expected, and when searching inside folders, doesn't throw any results and keeps on searching endlessly. I've reindexed several times and this started happening only after 10.6.6.
any suggestions…
Neerav

I had this issue. My Spotlight Icon was not showing up in the menu bar, however, searching within folders seemed to be working just fine. I did everything under the sun.
+Repaired Disk Permissions+
+Used Onyx & MainMenu+
+Terminal Commands+
+Replaced files+
Most of these older solutions did not work, however, because 10.6 handles Spotlight so differently.
*Here is what worked for me:*
I noticed that using Activity Monitor (/Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor.app) to restart the SystemUIServer would refresh the menu bar, but not make Spotlight reappear in the menu.
I then opened up Console (/Applications/Utilities/Console.app) and saw that SystemUIServer gave the following error:
+Error loading /System/Library/CoreServices/Search.bundle/Contents/MacOS/Search: dlopen(/System/Library/CoreServices/Search.bundle/Contents/MacOS/Search, 265): Library not loaded: /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Calculate.framework/Versions/A/Calculate+
+Referenced from: /System/Library/CoreServices/Search.bundle/Contents/MacOS/Search+
+Reason: image not found+
From that I deduced that there must be a problem with the Calculate.framework, because it wasn't loaded and SystemUIServer was trying to access it. Needless to say, after checking out the Calculate.framework (/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Calculate.framework/) I found that it was completely empty. That didn't seem right.
I got onto another macbook running OS X 10.6.6 and copied the Calculate.framework. After replacing the empty one with the healthy one, I restarted SystemUIServer from Activity Monitor and WHALA, it works again.
Hope this was helpful.

Spotlight Gets Spinning Ball

I'm getting the endless spinning ball when I attempt a Spotlight search. Also happened when I tried to open Time and Date in Preferences and occasionally happens at other rendom times.
Any ideas. Thanks

Then try rebuilding the Spotlight database. The simplest way is to go to the Spotlight System Preference, drag your hard disk into the Privacy section, quit System preferences then go back and remove your hard disk from Privacy.

Non-indexing of word files in spotlight and error message

Spotlight on my macbookpro seems not to index any of msword files (including those with .doc in the name), and so I tried going into the terminal and typing "mdimport -f directoryname. The result was an endless flood of error messages like those below. I'm clueless, but it seems like it's saying the appropriate plugin is not loading. Anybody understand what's really going on?
Thanks,
Tom
2006-04-01 20:32:26.541 mdimport[1488] CFLog (21): dyld returns 2 when trying to load /Library/Spotlight/Microsoft Office.mdimporter/Contents/MacOS/Microsoft Office
2006-04-01 20:32:26.543 mdimport[1488] CFLog (22): Cannot find function pointer OfficeImporterPluginFactory for factory BFA4E323-1889-11D9-82C8-000A959816BE in CFBundle/CFPlugIn 0x328170 </Library/Spotlight/Microsoft Office.mdimporter> (bundle, not loaded)
2006-04-01 20:32:26.575 mdimport[1488] CFLog (21): dyld returns 2 when trying to load /Library/Spotlight/Microsoft Office.mdimporter/Contents/MacOS/Microsoft Office
2006-04-01 20:32:26.577 mdimport[1488] CFLog (22): Cannot find function pointer OfficeImporterPluginFactory for factory BFA4E323-1889-11D9-82C8-000A959816BE in CFBundle/CFPlugIn 0x328170 </Library/Spotlight/Microsoft Office.mdimporter> (bundle, not loaded)
macbookpro 1.83 Mac OS X (10.4.5)
powerbook g4 667 Mac OS X (10.3.9)

I noticed that the update info showed that it was supposed to improve things. My experience was that when it came to content indexing Spotlight seemed to take its own sweet time about getting that done--it seemed like it continued to add content indexes long after it finished its regular index run. So that might be a factor. Also, it is my understanding that it does not index everything in very long files, only the first so many pages (don't remember just how many and am not sure that is correct info, Doc Smoke would know), and if that is true length could be a factor. I just re-indexed a folder full of MSWord docs, and Spotlight does seem to be finding the content now, however the files are all short, one to two pages. I did a search in another folder, which contains a few MSWord docs and which I had not re-indexed, and Spotlight did find one file that had a unique word but not another (in a longer file). So it looks like the situation may be improved, but you will have to re-index to see any of the improvement.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

Spotlight endless

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