Crawl performance is slow in SharePoint Server 2007 or in SharePoint Portal Server 2003

You may find that in certain situations, it takes a longer time than you expect for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 or Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 to crawl content in the portal site and update the content index. Performance is slow, although a hard disk, CPU, or network bottleneck does not exist.

This issue may occur if a proxy server is not configured for the search service in SharePoint Server 2007 or in SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and a proxy server is configured in Microsoft Internet Explorer. When a proxy server is not configured for the search service in SharePoint Server 2007 or in SharePoint Portal Server 2003, the account that is configured as the default content access account uses the proxy server settings that are configured in Internet Explorer.

To work around this issue, remove the proxy settings that are configured in Internet Explorer, and then do one of the following:

• If you are running SharePoint Server 2007, restart the Office SharePoint Server Search service.
• If you are running SharePoint Portal Server 2003, restart the Microsoft SharePointPS Search service.

To do so, follow these steps:

1. Remove the proxy settings that are configured in Internet Explorer. To do so, follow these steps:
   1. Start Internet Explorer (if it is not already started).
   2. On the Tools menu, click Internet Options.
   3. Click the Connections tab, and then click LAN Settings.
   4. Under Proxy server, click to clear the Use a proxy server for your LAN (These settings will not apply to dial-up or VPN connections) check box, and then click OK.
   5. Click OK.
2. Restart either the Office SharePoint Server Search service or the Microsoft SharePointPS Search service. To do so, follow these steps:
   1. Click Start, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Services.
   2. In the list of services, right-click Office SharePoint Server Search or Microsoft SharePointPS Search, and then click Restart.