OFF2000: Performance Issues After Installing Find Fast

After you install Microsoft Office and work in a program or after you restart Microsoft Windows, the computer responds slowly or may appear to temporarily stop responding (hang). The pointer may change to an hourglass and hard disk activity may increase. However, if you wait for a while the computer responds at its normal speed.

This problem may occur after you install the Microsoft Office Find Fast Indexer or if the amount of free disk space is small. Creating an index on a large drive may impact performance when creating or updating an index.

Use either of the following methods to resolve the problem.

Method 1: Change Registry Value for the Find Fast Indexer

To improve the performance when you use the Find Fast indexer utility, add the SlowDown value setting in the Windows registry. The SlowDown value tells Find Fast to delay indexing for a specified amount of time between index updates. Delaying indexing minimizes system activity and increases performance.

WARNING: If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, you may cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that you can solve problems that result from using Registry Editor incorrectly. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.

To add the SlowDown setting, follow these steps:

1. Quit any programs that are running.
2. click Start, click Run, and type regedit and click OK.
3. In the Registry Editor, navigate to the following key:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Office\9.0\Find Fast
4. On the Edit menu, point to New and click DWORD Value. With New Value #1 selected, type SlowDown, and then press ENTER.
5. With the value SlowDown selected, click Modify on the Edit menu. In DWORD Value under Base, click Decimal. Type a value greater than 1,000 (valid values are between 0 and 10,000).
   
   NOTE: These values are measured in milliseconds. The implicit default value is one second or 1,000 milliseconds.
6. Click OK and quit the Registry Editor.
7. Restart Windows.

Method 2: Check Your Disk Space

Check to make sure that you have enough disk space available. If you are running low on disk space, delete any files or folders that you are not using and empty the Recycle Bin to create more available disk space.

If you are running Windows 98, you can free up disk space by running the Disk Cleanup program included in the System Tools folder.

For additional information about the Disk Cleanup tool, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Although you configure Find Fast in the Control Panel, Find Fast indexes documents automatically when you use the Open and Advanced commands in Office programs, including Microsoft Outlook. Find Fast is placed in the Control Panel when you install Office.

You can use the Find Fast Control Panel to set options, and to create and delete indexes on the hard disk and on network drives.

For additional information about Find Fast, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: