Recently I came across a situation where there was no Search Service installed on SharePoint server. Service did not appear in “Services on a Server” page in Central Administration. I tried searching for a keyword on WSS 3.0 site but my search result always returned error saying that “site is not assigned an indexer”. What to do?? I followed number of blogs about this error. Some asked me to start Indexing services, search services from administrative services on my system. Few blogs said I need to assign a search database for a site.
After digging down through all the logs, I started looking for bits and pieces on my system. I found
- WSS_Search search DB missing in SQL Server
- WSS search service is not present on Admin Services
- Indexing service was stopped
- Option to select Search DB was grayed out
I immediately started SP configuration wizard in order to recover WSS_ search DB in sql server. After I recovered WSS_ Search DB, I attached a search DB for the site in CA, Started Indexing service on the Server. Still did not find search service installed….. I ran stsadm command line to install SPSearch Service and started a full crawl on a server.
stsadm.exe -o SPsearch -action start
stsadm.exe -o spsearch -action fullcrawlstart
Go to service in system, start WSS search service. My site can do search now.
