OFFXP: Hard Disk Runs Continuously After You Install Office XP

After you install Microsoft Office XP or Publisher 2002, your computer's hard disk may run continuously.

This behavior may be caused by the Indexing Service. To see whether fast searching is installed on the computer, follow these steps.

NOTE: The "fast searching" feature does not need to be installed on a Microsoft Windows 2000-based computer. Instead, Office XP uses the built-in search capabilities of Windows 2000.

1. Start an Office XP program or Publisher 2002.
   
   NOTE: The following menu commands are not applicable to Microsoft FrontPage 2002 and Microsoft Outlook 2002, because the Basic Search task pane does not appear in these two programs.
2. On the File menu, click Search.

• If Fast searching is not installed appears under Other Search Options in the Basic Search task pane, the support for fast searching is not yet installed.
  
  To install fast searching, click Install.
  
  -or-
• If Fast searching is enabled appears under Other Search Options of the Basic Search task pane, support for fast searching is installed.
  
  -or-
• If Fast searching is currently disabled appears under Other Search Options of the Basic Search task pane, support for fast searching is installed, but it is currently disabled.

Turn off the Indexing Service

To turn off the Indexing Service, follow these steps:

1. Start an Office XP program or Publisher 2002.
2. On the File menu, click Search.
3. Under Other Search Options, under Fast searching is enabled, click Search options.
   
   NOTE: If Fast searching is enabled does not appear, fast searching is not installed.

• To turn off the Indexing Service and leave the catalog files intact, click No, do not enable Indexing Service, and then click OK.
  
  -or-
• To turn off the Indexing Service and delete the catalog files, click Advanced, click Delete, and then click Yes.
  
  NOTE: In Windows 2000, Delete appears on the Action menu. Select the catalog and then click Delete.

Uninstall the "Support for Fast Searching" Feature

In addition to disabling the indexing service, you can uninstall the fast searching support for Office. Unless you have a custom need for Office fast searching, you can continue using built-in searching, and you can uninstall the "support for fast searching" feature from all Office XP products that are installed.

NOTE: This only applies to computers running Microsoft Windows 98, Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition, or Microsoft Windows NT 4.0. To uninstall the "support for fast searching" feature, follow these steps:

1. Quit all Office programs.
2. Click Start, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel.
3. In Control Panel, double-click the Add/Remove Programs icon.
4. On the Install/Uninstall tab, click to select Microsoft Office XP product, where Office XP product is the name of the specific Office product being used. If you are using a standalone version of one of the Office programs, click to select the appropriate product in the list. Click Add/Remove.
5. In the Maintenance Mode Options dialog box, select Add or Remove Features, and then click Next.
   
   This displays the Choose installation options for all Office applications and tools dialog box.
6. Click the plus sign (+) next to the Office Tools, click the icon next to Support for fast searching, and then select the Not Available installation state from the shortcut menu that appears.
7. After you change the installation state for Support for fast searching, click Update.
8. Repeat steps 2 through 7 for all other Office XP products installed.

NOTE: After you perform these steps, search for the Mosearch.exe and Mosdmn.exe files. You should not find them. If you do find them, you can safely delete these two files.

Fast searching in Office XP is similar to the Find Fast feature in Office 2000. Fast searching uses the Indexing Service in Office XP to create a catalog of Office files on your computer's hard disk.

For additional information about the Indexing Service, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: