PRB: SQL Server Full-Text Search Does Not Populate Catalogs

When you start a full or incremental population, you may receive the following events in the Microsoft Windows NT or Microsoft Windows 2000 Event Viewer application log and the population fails:

This behavior may occur if either of the following conditions is true:

• The BUILTIN\Administrators login was removed from SQL Server.
  
  -or-
  
  
• The Microsoft Search service is not running under the Local System account.

To resolve the problem:

• Make sure that the BUILTIN\Administrators login exists in SQL Server. -and-
  
  
• Make sure that the Microsoft Search service is running under the Local System account.

In some environments, you may not want to allow Microsoft Windows NT or Windows 2000 system administrators to administer or access SQL Server.

If that is the case and you want a full-text search, follow these steps:

1. Grant the [NT Authority\System] user a logon to SQL Server. For example:

   EXEC sp_grantlogin [NT Authority\System]

2. Add that account to the sysadmins role:

   EXEC sp_addsrvrolemember @loginame = [NT Authority\System] 
   , @rolename =  'sysadmin'

In most cases you do not have to add the BUILTIN\Administrators account. For more information, refer to the "References" section of this article.

As described in the "Workaround" section of this article, it is sufficient for the service account for SQL Server and SQL Server Agent to have login rights (and be sysadmins), and to add [NT Authority\System] as a sysadmin to represent the local system, which thereby enables full-text search to work properly.

REFERENCES

For additional information, click the article numbers below to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: If SQL Server is running in a clustered environment, you may want to review the following articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: