How to force Windows Indexing “activity”

Question

The Windows Indexing Service pauses itself when it detects the "user is active." Is there a registry entry or something to make it continue indexing regardless of user activity?

Clarification: in Windows XP

Answer 1

Microsoft Indexing service indexing optimization is controlled by a set of registry entries in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ContentIndex

Follow these steps to easily tune the performance of Indexing Service to index documents immediately:

1. Open the Computer Management control panel.
2. Expand the "Services and Applications" item.
3. Stop Indexing Service (right click -> Stop).
4. Right click Indexing Service -> All Tasks -> Tune Performance.
5. Select the Customize radio button and click the "Customize" button.
6. Select "Instant" indexing performance.
7. OK, OK.
8. Start Indexing Service (right click -> Start).

Note, that now indexing service will index documents as soon as the file system notifies it of any changes. WARNING: This setting applies to all catalogs. The setting could cause system slowdown due to the amount of documents being indexed in the background.

The indexing settings can be further tuned by selecting other items in the Tune Performance dialog. Each of these tunings, correspond to a set of values written to the ContentIndex registry key. These values can be tweaked to obtain the best performance balance.

Answer 2

Right-click on the Index service icon in the system tray (the magnifying glass), and click "Index Now." I know it sounds like an action that will only happen once, but this is in fact a toggle that, when turned on, does exactly what you are asking.