Search Error on new SharePoint 2013 site

Question

When I do a search on any search box on my SharePoint site, I'm getting no search results. Even when the item I'm searching on is on the same page as the search. Looking in the error logs, the following errors show up for this correlation id:

---

Entering monitored scope (Request (GET:http://OurSPSite.com:80/sites/ESearchCenter/Pages/default.aspx/results.aspx?k=How%20To)). Parent No
Name=Request (GET:http://OurSPSite.com:80/sites/ESearchCenter/Pages/default.aspx/results.aspx?k=How%20To) 0a4a269c-123d-1090-3fc7-fa9b08d707bc Non-OAuth request. IsAuthenticated=True, UserIdentityName=0#.w|specpro\user.name, ClaimsCount=27 0a4a269c-123d-1090-3fc7-fa9b08d707bc UserAgent not available, file operations may not be optimized. at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPFileStreamManager.CreateCobaltStreamContainer(SPFileStreamStore spfs, ILockBytes ilb, Boolean copyOnFirstWrite, Boolean disposeIlb) at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPFileStreamManager.SetInputLockBytes(SPFileInfo& fileInfo, SqlSession session, PrefetchResult prefetchResult) at Microsoft.SharePoint.CoordinatedStreamBuffer.SPCoordinatedStreamBufferFactory.CreateFromDocumentRowset(Guid databaseId, SqlSession session, SPFileStreamManager spfstm, Object[] metadataRow, SPRowset contentRowset, SPDocumentBindRequest& dbreq, SPDocumentBindResults& dbres) at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSqlClient.GetDocumentContentRow(Int32 rowOrd, Object ospFileStmMgr, SPDocumentBindRequest& dbreq, SPDocumentBindResults& dbres... 0a4a269c-123d-1090-3fc7-fa9b08d707bc ...)
Leaving Monitored Scope (PostResolveRequestCacheHandler). Execution Time=15.7365 0a4a269c-123d-1090-3fc7-fa9b08d707bc Setting [Display] as the FormContext.FormMode for the current page 0a4a269c-123d-1090-3fc7-fa9b08d707bc Culture Not Found 'ui-ui'. 0a4a269c-123d-1090-3fc7-fa9b08d707bc Setting [Display] as the FormContext.FormMode for the current page 0a4a269c-123d-1090-3fc7-fa9b08d707bc Setting [Display] as the FormContext.FormMode for the current page 0a4a269c-123d-1090-3fc7-fa9b08d707bc Unknown SPRequest error occurred. More information: 0x80070002 0a4a269c-123d-1090-3fc7-fa9b08d707bc SPRequest.GetMetadataForUrl: UserPrincipalName=i:0).w|s-1-5-21-3228743725-162544756-4102905824-7609, AppPrincipalName= ,bs System.IO.FileNotFoundException: The system cannot find the file specified. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070002),

CreatePageFromUrlNoUpperCase failed with FileNotFoundException. Url = '/sites/ESearchCenter/Pages/default.aspx/results.asp Unknown SPRequest error occurred. More information: 0x80070002 0a4a269c-123d-1090-3fc7-fa9b08d707bc SPRequest.GetMetadataForUrl: UserPrincipalName=i:0).w|s-1-5-21-3228743725-162544756-4102905824-7609, AppPrincipalName= ,bs System.IO.FileNotFoundException: The system cannot find the file specified. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070002)

---

This SharePoint site is a new install. Search has never worked on it yet. I have configured the search application and crawl as recommended by Microsoft. No errors show up in the crawl logs. The search application topology has green check marks for all server names.

This error happens when I do a simple search on content from one of my SharePoint sites. For example, in this case, I entered 'How To' in the Search box on a SharePoint page that had a link labeled as "How To Doc's". I'm getting the same errors with other similar searches on page text.

I've tried searching on several of the errors above and found nothing similar to this situation. Any ideas on why search is still returning no results? I would appreciate any information you could provide.

Answer 1

We eventually got search working by clearing the configuration cache. Here is the article with detailed information about this process:

Perform the below steps on all the servers in the farm.

1. Stop the Timer service. Start -> services.msc -> SharePoint Timer Service (SPTimerV4) -> Stop

2. Browse to %SystemDrive%\ProgramData\Microsoft\SharePoint\Config\GUID Note: The Program Data folder is a hidden file. There could be more than 2 folders in this location.

3. Open the folder named as GUID’s with ‘-’ (dashed filename for the folder). Example - 1f8c67d2-2cd9-4196-ab1a-d1a2daed2cc8

4. Arrange the files by Type. You would find several xml files and a file named cache.ini.

5. Delete all the xml files, and keep the cache.ini (DO NOT DELETE THIS FILE - cache.ini).

6. Reset cache.ini. If you open this file, you will find a number like this – 3400261. Change the value in cache.ini to 1.

7. Start the Timer service. Start -> services.msc -> SharePoint Timer Service (SPTimerV4) -> Start.

8. Note: The file system cache is re-created after you perform this procedure. Make sure that you perform this procedure on all servers in the server farm.

9. Make sure that the Cache.ini file in the GUID folder now contains its previous value. For example, make sure that the value of the Cache.ini file is not 1.

10. Check in the GUID folder to make sure that the xml files are repopulating. This may take a bit of time.

Hope this helps someone else too.

Answer 2

The problem turns out to be not so rare.
To clarify the issue: In my case search results always returned an error rather than no results, but the logs were identical as listed above.
Elsewhere I’ve read that errors / warnings associated with “UserAgent not available, file operations may not be optimized.” are benign.
The actual problem starts with “Culture Not Found 'ui-ui'”. If you happened to use a culture different than en-US anywhere (or even your browser decided to do it on your behalf), install appropriate language pack. This will also involve reconfiguring and restarting services, including search services, performed automatically at the end of the installation.
This is not enough, however. You also need to reset the search index.
The exact steps I’ve taken are: go to Central Administration, Search application. First, disable continuous crawl (if enabled) in your Content Sources. Then, reset the search index (Index Reset). It takes a while.
At this point you can check if it helped – if you try to search for something, search results won’t return anything but the search itself won’t fail.
Finally, perform full crawl and re-enable continuous crawl.
In my case it helped. Hope it will also help someone.