Spotlight Problems

I know there are a lot of threads about Spotlight not working properly, but I've read through all of them and none of the answers have helped me. I have not yet resorted to the archive and install method, and I would rather not.
Anyhow, my Spotlight works okay with what is in it's database. However the database only contains 4596 entries. I've tried several methods to re-index my hard drive. Each time I do it, it does re-index, but it only takes about a minute to do so and I end up with only 4596 entries in the index.
I've tried switching user accounts and the same scenario exists on another account.
Any ideas?

You might try forcing Spotlight to rebuild its index. A list of commands is here:
http://www.tug.org/pipermail/macostex-archives/2006-January/019755.html
Obviously just try this on one or two machines first.

Similar Messages

Random Beach-balling, Spotlight Problems and KPing

Hi. K. So. My MacBook Pro seems to be encountering some problems. I've had two seemingly random Kernel Panics in the last week or so. One was while I was attempting to restart (I had clicked the "Yes I do want to restart" thing, it hung, then KP) and then one yesterday seemingly completely random. I was using a few programs, but nothing too strenuous.
Now today I've gotten some fairly large hang ups. Firefox would beachball just loading a new web page (and since I'm on another computer next to this with little to no problems on the same net connection, it seems to be unrelated). For a while every program would hang up, to the point that I couldn't even open the Force Quit menu in the Finder.
Spotlight also seems to be causing some problems. The past couple times I've tried to open it's hanged like crazy, to the point that I have to restart since I can't seem to force it to quit or anything of the sort.
From what I've seen here it sounds like it would be the result of bad RAM, but I've had it as is for about 2 months now. There were no peripherals attached at any of these times, and I'm rarely running anything more exotic than Quicksilver, Firefox, MSN and xTorrent. If anyone wanted to walk me through how to access the panic.log that'd be great, maybe see if I can isolate things. I suspect if this keeps going I'm gonna have to take it in. I'm just avoiding Spotlight for now and backing up like mad. I thankfully have an "old" iMac G5 as backup. Still...I'm gonna be more than a little lost without my MBP. Any help/advice would be appreciated, or even just a sense of what I'm dealing with here and how long I can expect this to be out of commission.

Tom,
Just out of curiosity, if this is a C2D did you recently purchase and install the Pre 'N' Enabler patch? If yu didn't and your MBP isn't a C2D then using something like Onyx and cleaning upi the system as well as repairing disk permissions is the first thing I'd start with.
HTH,
Peter

Battery, Power, Deep Sleep and Spotlight problems after 10.9.4 update

Hi, I have a Macbook Pro 8,1 13in (Late 2011). I updated to the latest version of Mavericks (10.9.4) and iTunes on Sunday, right after that my macbook started to goes into Deep Sleep after closing the lid, even when the battery was 80% of charge. My battery normally lasts for almost 5 hours. After it went to deep sleep, the power bottom does not respond. Also, I have noticed that spotlight process in Monitor was consuming so huge amount of resources. This problem persists in Boot Camp. There is no way to turn the machine up without plugging it to the power cord. Sometimes it charges the battery as usual, sometimes it does not recognize the battery. Suddenly, the mac goes into sleep mode while I'm using it.
I have researching and troubleshooting in order to fix this but no solution. I have reset the PRAM and SMC. I made a backup of my files and installed Mavericks from the ground with external storage in order to erase the entire disk, no solution. I made an Internet Recovery and downgraded it to Lion, it worked for 2 hours and then I upgraded again to Mavericks (10.9.0) and the same problem came again, the upgraded to 10.9.4 and no solution at all.
I have searched on internet and there are other people experiencing this problem but nobody is able to bring a valid solution.
This is my battery's health:
Battery Information:
Model Information:
Serial Number: 9G1450LRJD3MA
Manufacturer: DP
Device Name: bq20z451
Pack Lot Code: 0
PCB Lot Code: 0
Firmware Version: 201
Hardware Revision: 2
Cell Revision: 158
Charge Information:
Charge Remaining (mAh): 3204
Fully Charged: No
Charging: Yes
Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 4859
Health Information:
Cycle Count: 931
Condition: Normal
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): 2406
Voltage (mV): 12273
System Power Settings:
AC Power:
System Sleep Timer (Minutes): 10
Disk Sleep Timer (Minutes): 10
Display Sleep Timer (Minutes): 10
Wake on AC Change: No
Wake on Clamshell Open: Yes
Wake on LAN: Yes
Current Power Source: Yes
Display Sleep Uses Dim: Yes
PrioritizeNetworkReachabilityOverSleep: 0
Standby Delay: 4200
Standby Enabled: 0
Battery Power:
System Sleep Timer (Minutes): 10
Disk Sleep Timer (Minutes): 10
Display Sleep Timer (Minutes): 2
Wake on AC Change: No
Wake on Clamshell Open: Yes
Display Sleep Uses Dim: Yes
Reduce Brightness: Yes
Standby Delay: 4200
Standby Enabled: 0
Hardware Configuration:
UPS Installed: No
AC Charger Information:
Connected: Yes
ID: 0x0100
Wattage (W): 60
Revision: 0x0000
Family: 0x0085
Serial Number: 0x008d9c78
Charging: Yes

Reseting the NVRAM/PRAM doesn't solve my problems.
Hi, since you have performed NVRAM /PRAM reset, try:
Intel-based Macs: Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)
and if still issues persist, try: OS X: What is Safe Boot, Safe Mode?
Cheers

Spotlight problem after Tiger to Leopard Upgrade

Since I upgraded my Macbook Pro 15" from Tiger to Leopard, Spotlight never worked. Initially I didn't mind too much but now I want to get it work.
I tried all suggestions I found in this forum (see list below) to no avail.
It seems Mac OS cannot index the system disk.
Any Terminal command like mdutil or mdimport have no effect and return no info. As a check, I ran the same utilities on my iMac (same Leopard version, but native) and they do in fact work as expected, as well as Spotlight. Another example: mdfind works on my iMac but return nothing on my MBP.
If I try the regular way, when I write my search string in the Spotlight window I just get nothing on my MBP.
I tried the OnyX features for Spotlight:
- Maintenance/Rebuild/Spotlight Index seems to do something, but in fact it does nothing useful
- Parameters/Spotlight/Options: Enable Indexing the Startup-Disk makes an attempt to enable it and switches immediately back to disabled. No way to keep the option checked. Also removed the Font cache from OnyX as suggested in some post - null.
Some attempts I made:
- used Disk Utility to check the disk (no repair needed)
- used Disk Utility to repair permissions: there are many that are always repaired... this makes me feel the problem might in fact be in the permission area. But after many repair the result is always null.
- added the start-up disk to the Privacy area in Spotlight Prefs, and later on removed - null
- trashed com.apple.spotlight.plist pref user prefs - a new one was created but no effect
- removed /.Spotlight-V100 from terminal - a new one was created but no effect
- used mdutil -E and -i on and off - I always get the message "/: Indexing and searching disabled"
- mdimport -L or -A or -X return nothing (on my iMac they return the list of plugins, schema etc.)
- rebooted many times also in safe mode - null
- the problem exists also for the other user on the same MBP
- tried OnyX as described above.
No effect!!
Now my question is: what can I try next ?
I'm sure there is some parameter somewhere (some .plist ?) that can re-enable Spotlight. But which one and where ?
Thanks in advance
Piero

Take a look at Spotless
http://www.fixamac.net/software/spot2/index.php
It deals mainly with Spotlight indexes, but it also contains some diagnostics - its description includes the following:
Spotless will automatically find and delete the "mds-crash-state" file from selected volumes. The file may be created if the Metadata Server crashed or was unexpectedly closed during the indexing process. The presence of this file can prevent Spotlight from indexing the volume in the future.
Spotless allows you to see exact size of the index directory on each volume.
Spotless also includes an on/off switch for Spotlight.
------------------

Spotlight problem in Lion (Tags gone AWOL!)

My friend, Pierre Bernard of Houdah Software, figured out what was going on. I'm curious if anyone else has yet encountered this problem.
I noticed the problem with sound files - you search for a specific piece of information (a tag) and it just can't find it. I noticed this both in Spotlight itself, and in Houdah Spot, which is a very advanced front end for Spotlight.
According to Pierre:
The problem is that the CoreMedia.importer does not forward this information to Spotlight.
Whenever you modify a file on the system, Spotlight searches for an importer plug-in to process the file. The role of the importer is to process the file into a list of metadata attributes and values. Those are stored by Spotlight and thus searchable.
The Lion version of CoreMedia.importer provides only basic information: just file attributes and a bogus audio bit rate.
The older version of CoreMedia.importer provided title, album, track number, author, composer, …
Pierre submitted this information to Apple
Here are his more specialized technical reports:
Attached below is the output for:
mdimport -d4 "/Volumes/Media/iTunes Music/Compilations/Jagged Little Pill/12 Wake Up.m4a"
CoreMedia.mdimporter reports a audio bit rate of 128 bit/s. The correct value would be 128kbits/s
Thus CoreMedia.mdimporter should return a value of 128000.
Conversely /System/Library/Spotlight/Audio.mdimporter reports correct values for MP3 files it imports.
Thus the Spotlight database has kbit/s values for M4A files, but bit/s value for MP3 files.
(Debug) Import: Attributes for file /Users/pierre/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Music/Compilations/Jagged Little Pill/12 Wake Up.m4a: {
   "_kMDItemFinderLabel" = 0;
   "com_apple_metadata_modtime" = 259498596;
   kMDItemAudioBitRate = 128;
   kMDItemAudioChannelCount = 2;
   kMDItemCodecs =     (
       AAC
   kMDItemContentCreationDate = "2004-06-09 18:33:12 +0000";
   kMDItemContentModificationDate = "2009-03-23 10:56:36 +0000";
   kMDItemContentType = "com.apple.m4a-audio";
   kMDItemContentTypeTree =     (
       "com.apple.m4a-audio",
       "public.mpeg-4-audio",
       "public.audio",
       "public.audiovisual-content",
       "public.data",
       "public.item",
       "public.content"
   kMDItemDisplayName =     {
       "" = "12 Wake Up.m4a";
   kMDItemDurationSeconds = "293.4766666666667";
   kMDItemKind =     {
       "" = "Audio-MPEG4";
       da = "MPEG-4-lyd";
       de = "MPEG-4-Audio";
       en = "MPEG-4 Audio";
       es = "Audio MPEG-4";
       fi = "MPEG-4-\U00e4\U00e4ni";
       fr = "Audio MPEG-4";
       it = "Audio MPEG-4";
       ja = "MPEG-4 \U30aa\U30fc\U30c7\U30a3\U30aa";
       ko = "MPEG-4 \Uc624\Ub514\Uc624";
       nb = "MPEG-4-lyd";
       nl = "MPEG-4-audio";
       pl = "audio MPEG-4";
       pt = "\U00c1udio MPEG-4";
       "pt-PT" = "\U00c1udio MPEG-4";
       ru = "\U0410\U0443\U0434\U0438\U043e MPEG-4";
       sv = "MPEG-4-ljud";
       "zh-Hans" = "MPEG-4 \U97f3\U9891";
       "zh-Hant" = "MPEG-4 \U97f3\U8a0a";
   kMDItemLogicalSize = 4909487;
   kMDItemMediaTypes =     (
       Sound
   kMDItemPhysicalSize = 4911104;
   kMDItemStreamable = 0;
   kMDItemTotalBitRate = 128;
The CoreMedia.mdimporter version 705.35 installed with Mac OS X Lion extracts much less metadata from AAC files than version 484.52 on Snow Leopard did.
Attached below is the output of
mdimport -d4 "/Volumes/Media/iTunes Music/Compilations/Jagged Little Pill/12 Wake Up.m4a"
First from Snow Leopard. The from Lion. Output on Lion lacks:
kMDItemAlbum
kMDItemAudioEncodingApplication
kMDItemAudioTrackNumber
kMDItemAuthors
kMDItemComposer
kMDItemMusicalGenre
kMDItemRecordingYear
kMDItemStreamable
kMDItemTempo
kMDItemTitle
Thus AAC music titles, including those purchased from the iTunes store, can no longer be found with Spotlight searching for author, composer, genre, …
Attributes for file /Volumes/Media/iTunes Music/Compilations/Jagged Little Pill/12 Wake Up.m4a: {
   ":MD:kMDItemSeedLastUsedDate" = 1;
   "_kMDItemFinderLabel" = "<null>";
   "com_apple_metadata_modtime" = 284396150;
   kMDItemAlbum = "Jagged Little Pill";
   kMDItemAudioBitRate = 128;
   kMDItemAudioChannelCount = 2;
   kMDItemAudioEncodingApplication = "iTunes v4.5, QuickTime 6.5.1";
   kMDItemAudioTrackNumber = 12;
   kMDItemAuthors =     (
       "Alanis Morissette"
   kMDItemCodecs =     (
       AAC
   kMDItemComposer = "Alanis Morissette & Glen Ballard";
   kMDItemContentCreationDate = "2010-01-05 15:55:49 +0100";
   kMDItemContentModificationDate = "2010-01-05 15:55:50 +0100";
   kMDItemContentType = "public.mpeg-4-audio";
   kMDItemContentTypeTree =     (
       "public.mpeg-4-audio",
       "public.audio",
       "public.audiovisual-content",
       "public.data",
       "public.item",
       "public.content"
   kMDItemDisplayName =     {
       "" = "12 Wake Up.m4a";
   kMDItemDurationSeconds = "293.4766666666667";
   kMDItemKind =     {
       "" = "MPEG-4 audio";
       da = "MPEG-4-lyd";
       de = "MPEG-4-Audio";
       en = "MPEG-4 audio";
       es = "Audio MPEG-4";
       fi = "MPEG-4-\U00e4\U00e4ni";
       fr = "audio MPEG-4";
       it = "Audio MPEG-4";
       ja = "MPEG-4 \U30aa\U30fc\U30c7\U30a3\U30aa";
       ko = "MPEG-4 \Uc624\Ub514\Uc624";
       nb = "MPEG-4-lyd";
       nl = "MPEG-4-audio";
       pl = "audio MPEG-4";
       pt = "\U00c1udio MPEG-4";
       "pt-PT" = "\U00c1udio MPEG-4";
       ru = "\U0410\U0443\U0434\U0438\U043e MPEG-4";
       sv = "MPEG-4-ljud";
       "zh-Hans" = "MPEG-4 \U97f3\U9891";
       "zh-Hant" = "MPEG-4 \U97f3\U8a0a\U6a94";
   kMDItemMediaTypes =     (
       Sound
   kMDItemMusicalGenre = "Adult Alternative Rock";
   kMDItemRecordingYear = 1995;
   kMDItemStreamable = 0;
   kMDItemTempo = 0;
   kMDItemTitle = "Wake Up";
   kMDItemTotalBitRate = 128;
Attributes: {
   "_kMDItemFinderLabel" = 0;
   "_kMDItemStaticInterestScore" = "1.111111";
   "com_apple_metadata_modtime" = 259498596;
   kMDItemAudioBitRate = 128;
   kMDItemAudioChannelCount = 2;
   kMDItemCodecs =     (
       AAC
   kMDItemContentCreationDate = "2004-06-09 18:33:12 +0000";
   kMDItemContentModificationDate = "2009-03-23 10:56:36 +0000";
   kMDItemContentType = "com.apple.m4a-audio";
   kMDItemContentTypeTree =     (
       "com.apple.m4a-audio",
       "public.mpeg-4-audio",
       "public.audio",
       "public.audiovisual-content",
       "public.data",
       "public.item",
       "public.content"
   kMDItemDisplayName =     {
       "" = "12 Wake Up.m4a";
   kMDItemDurationSeconds = "293.4766666666667";
   kMDItemKind =     {
       "" = "Audio-MPEG4";
       da = "MPEG-4-lyd";
       de = "MPEG-4-Audio";
       en = "MPEG-4 Audio";
       es = "Audio MPEG-4";
       fi = "MPEG-4-\U00e4\U00e4ni";
       fr = "Audio MPEG-4";
       it = "Audio MPEG-4";
       ja = "MPEG-4 \U30aa\U30fc\U30c7\U30a3\U30aa";
       ko = "MPEG-4 \Uc624\Ub514\Uc624";
       nb = "MPEG-4-lyd";
       nl = "MPEG-4-audio";
       pl = "audio MPEG-4";
       pt = "\U00c1udio MPEG-4";
       "pt-PT" = "\U00c1udio MPEG-4";
       ru = "\U0410\U0443\U0434\U0438\U043e MPEG-4";
       sv = "MPEG-4-ljud";
       "zh-Hans" = "MPEG-4 \U97f3\U9891";
       "zh-Hant" = "MPEG-4 \U97f3\U8a0a";
   kMDItemLogicalSize = 4909487;
   kMDItemMediaTypes =     (
       Sound
   kMDItemPhysicalSize = 4911104;
   kMDItemStreamable = 0;
   kMDItemTotalBitRate = 128;

Just FYI, I tried this and CoreMedia.mdimporter is still snagging my files.
However, if you do something like:
$ mdimport -g $to_the_snowleopard/Audio.mdimporter $files_to_index
This should work, at least until the system decides to reindex with the default. However, neither appear to be importing M4a files and when I run this command with either the Snow Leopard Audio.mdimporter or CoreMedia.mdimporter I get:
"2011-10-01 11:03:14.235 mdimport[1386:707] Imported '/Volumes/Work/Sound Library/Sound Ideas/SI9000 M4A/SI9012/901299 Swinging Wood Door 6.m4a' of type 'com.apple.m4a-audio' with no plugIn"
Ugh: "no plugin."   When I don't use -g and let the machine use it druthers to decide which importer to use, it uses the /System/Library/Spotlight/ one. If I remove the CoreMedia importer from /System/Library and leave the Audio and CoreMedia importer in /Library/Spotlight, it imports m4as with no plugin. If I COPY the old Snow Leopard CoreMedia importer into /System/Library/Spotlight, it imports m4as with no plugin. Something keeps the system from using the old importer, you suppose the new one is signed and the old one is just untrusted?
I for one use the kMDItemComment and kMDItemDescription extensively for a sound effects library and not having them in my Apple Lossless M4a files really screws me up.

Clean install and still spotlight problems

I've been having several problems with my system, including problems with spotlight, and so I decided it was time for a clean install. After a clean install to 10.5.2 and then a combo update to 10.5.6, spotlight still is not working correctly. I opened my sys prefs and saw that right after a clean install, there were still settings in my "privacy" list for spotlight from my previous system. I'm assuming then this info is somehow stored locally on each drive? Does that sound right?
Spotlight starting indexing like normal, but it got to the point where it hangs on 7364159 hours remaining. This was the same issue I had before the clean install.
so, two questions.
1- How can I get spotlight to work? I've tried "spotless" and others and it never seems to work correctly.
2- I've got 4 internal drives, could it be that the drives are two large for indexing? Seems strange but at this point I can't figure out why indexing never finishes.
Stock 320gb
seagate 500gb
2x seagate 1.5 TB
I really would appreciate any suggestions. I've been really frustrated that spotlight hasn't worked since buying this new Mac Pro.

I did as suggested and enabling them one by one allowed me to index my system drive but as soon as I started on the 2nd drive (seagate 1.5TB) it started doing the same kinds of things. It looks like it's working and then gets to the same point and the number starts to go up and the status doesn't move. I ran lsof | grep mdworkder in the terminal and I got this
mdworker 181 user cwd DIR 14,2 1258 2 /
mdworker 181 user txt REG 14,2 340640 212542 /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/Metadat a.framework/Versions/A/Support/mdworker
mdworker 181 user txt REG 14,2 1028096 849446 /Library/Caches/com.apple.LaunchServices-023501.csstore
mdworker 181 user txt REG 14,2 10244016 192561 /usr/share/icu/icudt36l.dat
mdworker 181 user txt REG 14,2 1059792 217357 /usr/lib/dyld
mdworker 181 user txt REG 14,2 136200192 585600 /private/var/db/dyld/dyldshared_cachei386
mdworker 181 user 0r CHR 3,2 0t0 184107396 /dev/null
mdworker 181 user 1w CHR 3,2 0t0 184107396 /dev/null
mdworker 181 user 2w CHR 3,2 0t0 184107396 /dev/null
mdworker 181 user 3u KQUEUE count=0, state=0x2
mdworker 181 user 4r DIR 14,2 272 24898 /Library/Spotlight
mdworker 181 user 5r DIR 14,2 714 152 /System/Library/Spotlight
After leaving it for a while, it doesn't seem to change at all. This is after it had started indexing the drive and then I restarted my computer. Once restarting, it has the spotlight window that says it is calculating the time and it doesn't do anything.

Spotlight Problem

Hi everyone,
since Lion i experience problems with Lion and Spotlight in that way, that it finds for example only pdf-files, no calendars, no emails, no pictures....
i work with a user account and
I tried:
- repair access rights
- reindexing by draging the volume in privacy and out
- reindexing with terminal
- reset persmission
at least i called Apple Support.
After the procedure above, they finally discribed to me, that my setup SSD (for OS) and HDD (User Account and for data at the place where the optical drive was) is not supported, and that may be the problem. So i build the hole thing back and the problem still exists.
- when i create a new user spotlight seams to work well.
- but when i try to access system settings and ical it crashes...
So, maybe my user account is broken and the whole installation....
I thinking about reinstall Lion...but what with my data? Migrate the old user will import the problem again...
Does anyone have a suppestion what else to do?
Thanks
-s

Reinstalling lion seems the way to go. Maybe your optical HDD isn't installed correctly as well. Try putting it back and making sure your connection is correct and secure. Further support for this particular setup at www.macsales.com who make a connection like that.
I have not expereinced the issue you described and I too have my OS on an SSD and my home folder on an HDD.
Reinstalling lion is a good idea. Verify and repair your disks in disk utility before proceeding to do so thoug, while in the boot recovery..

Spotlight problem: privacy list error won't go away

My Spotlight suddenly stopped being able to find anything. So I tried dragging the main disk's icon onto (and then off of) the Privacy tab of Spotlight, to ask it to re-index. But it gave me the Privacy Index error. So I went to Terminal and did sudo rm -rf /.Spotlight-V100, which succeeded, but: the privacy list error is still there, and oddly - the one thing that used to be in my privacy tab is still there! I thought that info was somewhere in the /.Spotlight-V100/... folder - how is it still there?!? What's a better way to wipe that info and ask Spolight to re-do everything?

I'm ruddy well frustrated
And we understand that. Most of us have been in similar situations. But troubleshooting a problem is hard enough in real life. When all we have to go on is words typed here, it's of the utmost importance to be painstakingly precise. In your case, it is very often the solution to reboot the iPod while it's plugged into the wall, and you had never stated clearly that you had done that. Go back and read your previous posts if you doubt it. If we are able to help each other, we have to know exactly what has happened, and even then it's not easy. And again, we are all just fellow users who come here voluntarily to help each other, so all getting mad at us does is make people not want to help you.
There are several things that might be going wrong, but one that I would test is your cable. Perhaps some of the wires inside have broken and that's why it's not realizing it is plugged into the wall outlet. Do you have a friend that you can borrow a cable from to test that out? (And to answer your question about the dock, it won't make any difference.)
12" PB, Mac Mini (x2), G3 iMac (x3), G4 iMac, G5 iMac, Centris 610, SE30, Mac+ Mac OS X (10.4.4) 3G iPod, iPod shuffle, iPod nano

Spotlight problems: where should mdimporters be?

I see that others are having problems now, too, after the 4.5 upgrade.
After installing, the Office 11.2.3 upgrade I was having a **** of a time getting my home computer to find Entourage messages through Spotlight. After trying many things, someone helped me by pointing out that the mdimporter plugins should be in the System/Library/Spotlight folder, not the Library/Spotlight folder, voila!
Now for other applications I noticed the same thing, including Apple apps. So, where should the mdimporter plugins ultimately be? Does this have anything to do with the recent 4.5 upgrade?
I love the cuss word filter here! 1984 is a bit like 1984, no?
Thanks in advance.
iMac G5 17 Mac OS X (10.4.4)
iMac G5 17 Mac OS X (10.4.4)

Generally speaking the /System/Library is reserved by Apple for Apple's own system level installed goodies. The /Library folder is what should be used by things installed by a user's programs. Thus my /Library/Spotlight folder sports the following program mdimporters:
AppleWorks.mdimporter
Keynote.mdimporter
Microsoft Office.mdimporter
Pages.mdimporter
While the /System/Library/Spotlight folder has these:
Application.mdimporter
Audio.mdimporter
Bookmarks.mdimporter
Chat.mdimporter
Font.mdimporter
iCal.mdimporter
Image.mdimporter
iPhoto.mdimporter
Mail.mdimporter
PDF.mdimporter
PS.mdimporter
QuartzComposer.mdimporter
QuickTime.mdimporter
RichText.mdimporter
SystemPrefs.mdimporter
vCard.mdimporter
So for program importers think /Library, for Apple's own deeper level ones think /System.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

Slow backup (and spotlight problems) after time machine restore

Hi All,
After having some shaky moments with my macbook pro's internal hard drive, I have now installed a new one. I am running the latest version of 10.6.8.
The machine is running fine after a restore from my Time machine backup, but there are a few problems:
1) Time machine is now making a new backup - it looks like it wants to do a complete backup, which is ok as I have the space. However, after about 30 mins it has completed 156k and is now running at about 1k a second (or less).
2) Spotlight is reindexing, but appears to be stuck on "Estimating indexing time".
3) I tried opening mail, and it said it had to convert my mailbox - it got part way through the number of messages and stopped. I force quite, I'll try that one again later.
Any ideas for 1) and 2) above? I can't see any odd looking messages in the console...
Cheers

So... thought I'd update this since it may help someone else later...
The time machine backup completed fine in the end - it looked like it wanted to do a complete backup but I think it just did a delta in the end.
The spotlight reindex ran for about another 6 hours, judging by the console messages.
However, now I'm trying to run mail - and it's stuck on importing the mailbox - it got to 14157 of 57904 and stopped there. The "time remaining" is increasing by about 5 minutes every minute....
I've seen the following message in the console, which I also saw while it was trying to do the spotlight index last night:
NSDataMessageStore: couldn't find body
Anyway, I'll let it run and see what happens...

A reproducible Spotlight problem after installing CS6

So, I am able to reproduce the following bug every single time I try it and I'm wondering if anybody else can do the same:   Installing CS6 Design and Web Premium renders Spotlight useless on new documents copied to the computer.   A rebuild of the Spotlight index is required post-installation to fix the problem.
Steps to reproduce bug:
1. Start with a clean install of Mac OSX 10.8.2 -- install any updates via Software Update.
2. Install Adobe CS6 Design and Web Premium -- the entire suite.   After the installation is done, run one of the apps to update everything CS6 related
3. After the installation is done, connect to a file server and copy some documents (Word, PDF, etc) to a folder on the desktop of the Mac
4.) Open the Folder and do a "find" for some content within the files (this would be using the built-in Spotlight feature of Mac OSX for content searching.)
Results:   NOTHING IS FOUND.
Expected results: results should be found from the contents of the files within the folder on the desktop.
Comments:
If I do all the above *without installing CS6* -- then Spotlight works to content search the files as expected.
If I do all the above (with the failed results), then rebuild the spotlight index -- then Spotlight appears to work.
However, I should not have to rebuild the Spotlight index after installing the CS6 Suite, so it's not clear to me why the installation of the CS6 Suite is "breaking" Spotlight.
I am able to reproduce this consistently.   We are in the process on Campus of trying to deploy a master image on thousands of Macintoshes here and I would like to open a dialog with somebody from Adobe about this problem to see if we can figure out what the core problem is here.

Hi Suai,
Thank you for visiting the HP Support Forums! I see you have recently replaced your HP Officejet 7110 with the same model but are not able to print any documents. You tried assigning the old IP address with no success.
I would like you to start here: 'Printer is offline' Message Displays on the Computer and the HP Printer Will Not Print, please complete ALL steps listed.
Once on the page select your current Operating system and proceed. Please let me know what the Print and Scan Doctor finds, and if this was helpful.
I will watch for your reply.
HevnLgh
I work on behalf of HP
Please click “Accept as Solution” if you feel my post solved your issue, it will help others find the solution.
Click the “Kudos Thumbs Up" to the left of the reply button to say “Thanks” for helping!

Leopard spotlight problem

ok ever since i upgraded my macbook (bought it last may) to leopard when i turn on my macbook spotlight indexes my hard drive for about 3 minutes then stops and it does this every time i turn it on how do i fix this

Mine does the exact same thing - I've read some other advice that indicates it might be related to Boot Camp volumes. If you "hide" them from Spotlight, the problem might desist. Mine, on the other hand, did not - and occasionally, Spotlight loses half of its index and I have to rebuild it. So far, this has been an entirely disappointing upgrade. One computer got hosed (a mac mini) and one was left with a crippled Spotlight.

Macbook slow to boot, slow to work - Spotlight Problem? (External HD)

Hi everyone,
I have a Macbook from 2008 (The first aluminum model I believe, before they got rebranded as Pro). Recently I wanted to backup my pictures from iPhoto and I had an external HD formatted as exFAT. The moment I plugged my external HD in, my macbook started lagging real badly with the color wheel not going away. So I just held the power button until it restarted.
When it rebooted, it was first of all EXTREMELY slow to boot, and then once I logged in to my admin account, I could barely do anything. I tried my one other account on the computer and it was the same story. I noticed that Spotlight was not working, and when I clicked it ( and after 5 minutes it finally popped up), it said indexing, and it would never stop. I restarted a few times and it never stops indexing. From what I gather in Google searches, my macbook tried to index the hard drive when it was plugged in and somehow got stuck in this loop.
I read a few sites on how to disable spotlight completely, but the problem is that the computer is way too slow and unresponsive to do anything of the sort. Terminal can be opened but the commands won't execute. I tried holding shift to start the Mac in safe mode, but the bar moves half an inch and then I just get the little lines around the circle going forever with no bar progress.
If anyone has any suggestions, I would greatly appreciate it. I cannot afford to lose these photos, that is my number one concern. There are MANY documents that I need on the HD too, but the pictures are more important. Please give me some advice, while keeping in mind that my data is my primary concern, a reformat is out of the question.
Thanks kindly,
Z
PS: Not sure what Mac version I am, but I was updated to Snow Leopard and I always let the auto-updater do its thing. Don't even bother asking for activity monitor, way too laggy to open that (I tried, it opens but you can't click anything).

Here's a terminal command: sudo mdutil -i on /
This works well =) This will help spotlight
http://osxdaily.com/2007/02/15/spotlight-wont-work-fix-a-broken-spotlight-menu-w ith-these-troubleshooting-tips/

Spotlight Problem: mdimporter files erroneously recognized

After having problems with searching in Spotlight for text in MS Office docs, I messed up all my .mdimporter files, so now, they all (not just MS office ones) are set to "Open with Address Book" (instead of "None") and likewise, their "Kind" is "Address Book Document" instead of "Metadata importer". Any ideas how to fix this? Thanks.
G5 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

You might try re-setting LaunchServices. Dr. Smoke has a set of instructions for doing this:
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/resetlaunchservices.html
It sounds like you did something to mess up the associations...
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

Lion Spotlight Problem on an old Macbook2,1

Folks,
After updating to lion 4 weeks ago, just realized, there is one thing that still bugging over a month now, a "blind" spotlight. Does anyone experiencing difficulties to find file(s) by using spotlight? the file exist but the spotlight seemed can't see, please guide me to handle this problem.
The problems are only happen on my macbook (late 2006) 2GB ram not on my iMac 21.5' (late 2009), so is it about the old machine or else?
Thank you

Hi shotekitehi, me again, the guy from the same city.
I tried a new approach. It is not the most elegant way but it works. You mentioned the right thing. When you open another account besides you "problem" account (it should be an Admin-account) and set the properties so that you can read and change files in the problem-account, spotlight works fine. I noticed that I am really lost without spotlight and happy to find this way, thanks for helping and maybe it helps the others, best
Sascha

Can someone help me debug this Spotlight problem?

I am a novice server user, running a macmini OSX 10.6.5 server - AFP filesharing from the mini to several Macs and on Windows XP machine. When I create a .pdf document on the Windows XP machine, I can search via Spotlight and identify that document. However, if I physically move it from the folder in which it was created to another folder (on the same HD on the miniserver), I can no longer find the document with Spotlight.
If I cut and paste the document from the original folder to any other folder (all these on the miniserver) I can find it with Spotlight.
Spotlight is enabled as an ACL user at the highest level on the server shared HD and shows up same on all the child folders on the HD.
Any thoughts what might be going on?
thanks!!!!

Please clarify:
Did you expect instant results, or did you allow time for spotlight to make another pass updating it's index of the volume?

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