Comments on: FAQ: Why does WDS / Windows Vista use so many processes?

By: Slow running Laptop - Page 3 - Tech-101 Free Computer Support

Slow running Laptop - Page 3 - Tech-101 Free Computer Support — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 15:43:51 +0000

[...] has some interesting comments here; read a good portion to see the performance issues, Personally on XP, I disable Indexing to [...]

By: Brandon

Brandon — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 18:35:25 +0000

Could be a bug in your firewall software. Which firewall program are you using? Firewalls that show alerts for things like this are generally overkill and even problematic, since the user is very rarely in a position to actually answer the question being asked.

Second, why bother blocking it? Can’t you just click Allow and not get the warnings again?

Third, SearchFilterHost.exe itself doesn’t really do anything. It loads handlers that do the work depending on what type of file is being indexed. It could be that you loaded a handler that is trying to access the network (either directly or indirectly). Although to be honest I’m not sure SearchFilterHost even allows network access… I’ll try to see what I can find out. Which OS is this on?

By: hate it

hate it — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 01:33:09 +0000

The program is Microsoft Search Filter Host, it tries to access the Internet everytime I open a photo or goto my pictures folder, this is such a pain as I do alot of photo editing and such, I have blocked it with my firewall but I get the alerts quite frequently. Any way to disable this program, its:
C:/WINDOWS/SYSTEM32/SEARCHFILTERHOST.EXE

By: Brandon

Brandon — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 20:54:15 +0000

Hi Stephen,

Which process are you referring to? Do you have Outlook installed and being indexed? If so, the MAPI protocol handler (which runs in SearchProtocolHost.exe) will load the MAPI store which may result in Outlook contacting the mail server. This is just MAPI / Outlook working as designed, and performing the same operations it normally performs in the Outlook.exe process.

Hope that helps,
Brandon

By: hate it

hate it — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 00:08:37 +0000

How can I stop this file from trying to access the web, my firewall alerts me everytime and it seems to happen about every few minutes, it’s a real bother.

I’m not prepared to stop the alerts as other programs do try to access the web without my permission which I want to know.

Thanks

By: Jim Socal

Jim Socal — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 02:14:06 +0000

I agree with Richard in #9 comment:
I would really like to know WHY Vista needs to access the net so often when I am just searching for things on my hard drive??
Vista is really annoying and seems very Big Brotherish. I hate UAC and I hate Search Filter Host.

By: Richard Threlkeld

Richard Threlkeld — Mon, 12 May 2008 19:18:36 +0000

I run ZoneAlarm and searchprotocolhost comes up in bursts where it will access the internet 20 times 5 seconds apart. This annoys me enough I will not click “remember this” to give it permanent permission. Why does it hit the internet so much and so often? It is supposed to be indexing stuff on my system. I can see a once a day attempt to get updates, but this is way too much.

By: damnprinter

damnprinter — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 09:04:31 +0000

I really hate Vista Search they took a good idea and just ruined it with poor execution. The indexer is slow, hard to configure and uses a ton of resources.
….
I can’t pause it, I can’t schedule it, I cannot get it to just index groups. On day one of setting up Vista all I really want is all the filenames to be indexed like Avafind and then do the content indexing at night when I’m asleep (or not at all). I also only want to include certain groups like documents, music and movies in the “content” index, basically an opt in setup. However someone at Microsoft decided that people should be forced an agonizing setup ordeal one file extension at a time.
…
The only thing I really like about Vista Search is that it has a field in the Start Menu.

By: Luqman

Luqman — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 16:20:45 +0000

Disable XML indexing by going to control panel, Indexing Options and unchecking XML as an extension (its under the advanced button). There appears to be a bug in indexing XML files. WDS should drop its CPU usage considerably. I personally recommend limiting the number and type of files indexed. I have unchecked my music files (I use itunes, so no need to index) and graphics/file formats I don’t use (3gp etc). I also have unchecked .zip and .rar files. I keep all those files in one spot anyway.

By: Maddy

Maddy — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 06:37:40 +0000

Hello, thanks for such a nice review and explanation for the three mysterious looking processes.
But what I am troubled about is the CPU/Memory use these process are making and that too unwanted.
On my XP machine these processes came only after I installed Win Desktop Search 3.1, is there any way to keep these proces s disabled preferably or keeping low memory…..
Regards,
MADHUR

By: foad420

foad420 — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 01:51:34 +0000

the problem with my SearchProtocolHost.exe is that is constantly reading random music files all day long after disabling all mediacenter sharing, zune sharing, and others. Its alwasy slowing me down to 15 fps during games becasue I can disabled it all day long in services.msc and other places…but it always seems to run no matter what I tell Vista..

By: Guy Swarbrick

Guy Swarbrick — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 08:56:43 +0000

I can see why they need to be separate processes. What I’m struggling with is why searchprotocolhost.exe feels the need to grab 40% of my CPU capacity when there are other apps active, preventing me from doing anything productive…

By: Kevin

Kevin — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 15:38:24 +0000

Hi Brandon,

Why do I keep getting a message from searchprotocolhost.exe saying “Database login failed: Catastrophic failure.” It is running under the User, not the System. Am I missing an update?
Any help would be appreciated.

By: Eric

Eric — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 06:05:52 +0000

Brandon,

I never really thought through what each of those processes do or why they’re separated but it does make a lot of sense, especially restricting SearchFilterHost.exe so much. Interesting stuff to say the least.

Slightly related but I’m working on a property handler for media files (AVI is most important format but others too) using XMP. It’s basically alpha quality. If it interests you, you can check it out a http://sourceforge.net/projects/vistaprophand . Sorry to talk about this in a comment but I couldn’t figure out a way to email you directly.

By: rtk

rtk — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 06:01:49 +0000

Makes perfect sense, thanks for the explanation.