Hi, below is a reprint from my post on avsforum.com. It's pretty much self-explanatory; I have VMC, TV Pack, and SP1 - but that may not be pertinent. The TGB thread cited is http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/p/64549/310318.aspx#310318.

In short: since as indicated below VMC picks up literally tens of thousands of individual indices in Windows Search, what EXACTLY are the files and folders that must be indexed in order for VMC's own search function to work - and if any of them are inside ProgramData, how does one tell Windows Search to look there?

 Surely it cannot take 59,000 indexed locations just to search for the next episode of "Lost"!

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So I noticed that a couple of files had become huge again and decided to clean them up. I deleted the windows indexing file (have to stop the Windows search process first) and rebuilt. Same size. So I got it into my head that I would turn off indexing for everything except what is absolutely necessary for Media Center.

Except after I switched every hard disk off (right-click on drive, properties, uncheck "index this drive") and removed all of the default locations from Control Panel > Indexing (zero files indexed, so I'm on the right track), I could not get CP to index ProgramData\Microsoft (where the actual files are) or, for that matter, ProgramData at all - it was greyed out in the list of places I can index.

(By the way, you cannot simply turn off Indexing, which would have been my first choice - I personally don't like Vista's search functionality - because without it, Media Center will refuse to search for movies, music, and TV shows.)

After much searching, I found on TGB a little-known "DOS indexing override": from a command prompt with admin rights, navigate to windows\ehome and type "ehprivjob /DoRegisterSearch." What this does is query the files in ehome for links and sets those up within Windows Search. I went back into Indexing, expecting to see a bunch of individual folders now listed, but was suprised to instead see a green button "Media Center" listed as an index item (I guess Vista has the ability to treat Media Center as a pseudo-folder like My Documents). There was no way to expand or drill down, so I did not know exactly what folders and files were actually being indexed, but as I hit the advanced > rebuild index button, I supposed it would be a couple hundred versus the 65,000 that was originally indexed.

Three hours later, I discovered how wrong I was. Windows Indexing finally reported that over 59,000 files had been indexed, and the indexing database file was almost exactly the same size as I started out with. Incredibly, practically the ENTIRE indexing database had been devoted to Media Center!

So unless somebody can figure out exactly what files Indexing actually needs to index - and how to overcome Indexing's refusal to allow selecting those folders and files (which I am certain are inside the greyed-out ProgramData folder), trying to pare down the Index folder is a fruitless exercise. I just reset everything back to the way it was!

P.S. The article on TGB was actually about fixing broken indexing with TV Pack. One of the suggestions was to install Windows Search 4.0. I found this on Microsoft's web site and selected the version for "x86 32-bit Vista with Service Pack 1." I downloaded it, ran it, and got the message "This program does not apply to your installation." Thanks, Microsoft.

Might check the library or media folders setup in media center

and make sure it is not set to monitor the whole C: or windows drive.

Sounds like a fine recommendation. But if you are talking about Watched Folders (setup, Library, add/remove folders), the only folders watched are Recorded Music (on the D: drive), pictures on the Public drive, and Recorded TV (on the T: and V: drives, you have to see my thread "Jeff's Forced Spanning Array" for the explanation) but short answer is, I point library folders to other drives specifically to keep that from happening.

 

Nonetheless, you've given me an idea...my pictures folder doesn't have 59,000 files in it but there certainly are several thousands. I have the Public drive set as Do Not Index; are you saying that because the pictures folder on the Public drive is a Watched Folder within Media Center, that means Vista is automatically indexing it anyway even though it is NOT on the C: drive and is on a drive set to NOT be indexed? I hadn't thought of that. That seems like it would be an easy thing to test.

 

Okay, if I temporarilly drop Music and Pictures as Watched Folders, rebuild the Index, and suddenly it drops in size, then I know what's causing it. But then comes the fix...I have no need or wish to search for photos in Media Center. Nor, frankly, anything other than TV shows in the Guide. How do I tell Vista Indexing Service to index guide listings and ONLY guide listings? (i.e., directly specifying a particular folder rather than a global "everything Media Center has its hooks into.)

Looks like you can go to tasks/settings and run library setup.

Choose the library you want to setup and click next.

It will give you the options to add or remove folders.

Go through setup for each library and remove the folders you don't

want watched for media.

I only use the basic default folders and no public folders at this point.

You have to be very specific as to subfolders that you add or you

end up getting any type of media in the folders.

It will index all the thumbnails and pictures that the operating uses

for the desktop and programs,not to mention all the windows sound files.

When I index an external media folder,I usually just make a folder

for that purpose and have media center watch that.

I understand what you are saying. Here's what I am after (and perhaps it just cannot be done), illustrated by taking an extreme example. Suppose I had 10 TV shows and 10 billion songs. I want to be able to watch the TV shows and listen to the music in Media Center, but I don't watch to SEARCH the music in Media Center. If I use "Media Center" as a target in Vista > Control Panel > Indexing, it is going to index those 10 billion songs even though I have no interest in searching them. And if I remove the folder with those 10 billion songs from my Library watched folder list, then while Vista is no longer going to index them, they also won't show up in Media Center > My Music.

 

So what I'm after (and it may well be impossible) is this. I DON'T want to tell Vista Indexing service to index "Media Center," I want to tell Vista > Control Panel > Indexing Service to index only the folder and files that point to my television guide entries.  Clearly this cannot be done within Media Center, because if I drop the 10 billion songs from watched folder status they also stop appearing in My Music. The only way to do this would seem to be to tell indexing service the exact (and presumably much smaller number of) folders and files to index that contain only the Guide information. I strongly suspect that this stuff is buried somewhere in the C:\ProgramData\Microsoft folder thread, but when I try to point Indexing Service there, the entire folder chain is maddenly greyed out.

 

Thanks for your efforts, I'm about to throw in the towel on this one.

Out of interest why does this cause you so much upset?

I think the basic story is that the MCE team have taken advantage of funcitonality that exists elsewhere in Windows rather than reinvent the wheel. So for example, post-TV Pack at least, Windows Search is used for the EPG, and Media Centre actually uses Media Player for non-TV video playback.

 

>Out of interest why does this cause you so much upset?

If I answer that question, I am going to sound paranoid.

Okay, I'm paranoid.

 I do not use firewalls, virus scanners, or defender (I do of course have a firewall on my router, and I will admit to using Vista's pop-up blocker). Instead, I keep an Acronis backup and use it religiously. As in if I get so much of a whiff of malware, if I think a driver may have been corrupted, if I think a disk sector is bad, I don't waste any time trying to track it down, I simply restore my backup. I keep my C: drive small, My Documents is pointed to a different partition, My Music is on that partition, and my Recorded TV is on a completely different drive (drives, actually). With a magnetic hard drive it took about 20 minutes to restore my C: drive, and now that I have moved to a small (64 GB with C: on a 20GB partition) solid-state drive, it takes less than ten minutes to restore everything back to pre-possible-virus status.  Because I keep all my data elsewhere, I never lose anything.

 Except...

...doing this overwrites my guide, my scheduled recordings, and above all the DRM folder in /ProgramData/Microsoft. I lose the ability to play every show I've ever recorded, since the last time I made a full backup (and I mean EVERY show, since my cable company tags every show, even broadcast TV, as "restricted content"...I realize that being in Britain, you don't have to deal with this CableCard nonsense). So before I restore, I have to make a quick backup of just the /ProgramData/Microsoft folder. This way I restore the main backup, restore ProgramData (and I should point out that with a few clicks I can tell Acronis to do this sequence all automatically), and my PC is truly back to the way it was an hour ago.  The index folder happens to be inside ProgramData, and it is by far the largest thing I have to backup (as in about 80% of my "quicky" backup is consumed by that one gigantic file) and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger. I could point the index folder to another place, and frankly that's what I may wind up doing...but it would have to be on another drive, because if it stays on the C: drive then the moment I restore a backup, the index is overwritten and it's going to start the hours-long rebuild process, during which time much of the functionality in Media Center is unavailable.

edit: in just the few weeks since my first post, indexing has increased from 59,000 to 81,000 files. that is seriously out of control. I don't think old files within the index folder ever get purged, and for that matter it sure looks like obsolete Guide entries don't get purged even during a Disk Cleanup [hey Microsoft, those would be mighty good targets of Disk Cleanup in the next Vista Service Pack].

 edited edit: I moved the index folder off the C: drive; that's an option within control panel, indexing, and then I believe "advanced." That did work, so far as it goes (no longer part of the mini-backup nor, for that matter, any backup at all) so it no longer slows down my restore process; but it continues to grow, grow, grow! I guess I can always buy a 2TB eSATA drive just to store my index folder on...