Searching for less Searching

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kosmo

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When I built my W10 Iot LTSC-21 ISO I unchecked "Search" - because I have 2 apps that work better with a tiny fraction of the overhead. And I understand that NTL can't remove / disable every trace of of many of the "features" it removes (like Edge) but i'm left with a Search infestation today that i'm hoping for advice on cleansing from my system.

I have SearchApp.exe taking up 120mb of (suspended) memory.

I have a Search folder under C:\Users\kosmo\AppData\Local\Packages that was 20mb when I found it. I attempted to delete it (admin) and was denied permission. (don't you just love it when your software, running on your hardware, tells you what you can and can't do?) Ok, nSudo fixed that but when I rebooted it was back at 9mb.

Any ideas on how to relive myself of this particular blessing from M$?
 
(confused) Well LTSC doesn't include Cortana and there's no Cortana in the list of Windoze Add / Remove Apps so.... ?
 
SearchUI.exe - is a resource greedy little SoB --> ?:\Windows\SystemApps\Microsoft.Windows.Cortana_cw5n1h2txyewy
 
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It's to preserve certain files for compatibility. SearchApp. exe is normal. My LTSC2021 also takes up over 100 MB when searching.
 
dont matter what a program uses when its doing stuff its when its doing nothing and eats resources that matters. Everything dont eat f-all because it dont have it running as a service and even though it has to start up it still leaves ms search in the weeds plus it is extremely easy to modify its settings depending on the search scenario. the last good(half decent anyway) ms search was in xp.
 
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OK, here’s my report:

I opened up Everything and asked it if it could find “Cortana”. I showed me 57 hits - including 2 animated Cortana gif’s of circles doing backflips! Now think about it. M$ allegedly “removed” Cortana from LTSC (since it’s a “serious” OS configured for grownups). But because Search & Cortana are joined at the hip what they actually seem to have done is just hide the Cortana UI. And so when I built the ISO I “removed” “Search” but, once again, “for compatibility” the Search window is gone but the search components are all still there - throbbing in the background. (Chewing on the timbers that hold the building up)

So, for the sake of Science, I decided to experiment. I rebooted into my PE Rescue disk and renamed C:\Windows\SystemApps\Microsoft.Windows.Search_cw5n1h2txyewy\SearchApp.exe to “SearchApp.exe.xxx. Then I deleted the (9mb) C:\Users\kosmo\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.Windows.Search_cw5n1h2txyewy folder and rebooted back into Windoze. Normal boot. Everything seems fine. The Search folder is back under AppData\Local\Packages but it’s only 16kb rather than the 9mb it returned as the last time I deleted it. And SearchAppp.exe is no longer in memory. The event logs show that the system couldn’t wake up SearchApp.exe but it didn’t get hysterical about it. I’m calling this a winner.

Part of this experiment was to see if the system would replace the corrupted search file from the backups in WinSxS but it didn’t. Everything says there’s 6 different WinSxS folders with Cortana files and about a dozen with SearchApp files. Folders that exist, in theory, in case my Cortana or Search programs get corrupted and need to be "repaired". (over my dead body) Anyone care to offer opinions as to the wisdom of discarding these folders?
 
I removed SearchApp and Windows Search components from LTSC 2021 (not IoT).
After installation, there's no Search services or processes running, and AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.Windows.Search doesn't exist.

Windows 11 x64-2024-08-04-20-26-28.png
 
garlin said:
I removed SearchApp and Windows Search components from LTSC 2021 (not IoT).
Click to expand...
Hmmm. I assume you mean that you removed them with NTL.

Here's all of the "search"-related entries from my preset:

Code: 
<ComponentFeatures>
            <Feature enabled="yes">ShellSearchSupport</Feature>
        <Features>
            <Feature name="SearchEngine-Client-Package">false</Feature>
        <Tweaks>
            <Settings>
                <TweakGroup name="DesktopTweaks">
                    <Tweak name="Search\SearchboxTaskbarMode">0</Tweak>
                <TweakGroup name="Privacy">
                    <Tweak name="Windows Search\AllowCloudSearch">0</Tweak>
                    <Tweak name="Search\BingSearchEnabled">0</Tweak>
                    <Tweak name="SearchSettings\IsDeviceSearchHistoryEnabled">0</Tweak>

Is the ShellSearchSupport = "Yes" my mistake? If so do you know how this would have been called out in the program? (since I wouldn't have knowingly or consciously enabled anything that sounded like Win Search)
 
You're supposed to remove the Search components if don't want background services. A component includes all of the installed files, running Services, and reg entries for a provided feature. Tweaking your desktop settings won't stop any Services.

1. Load your image.
2. Click on the Compatibility icon from the Components toolbar. Uncheck Recommended to unlock protection for deletinig Windows Search
3. Uncheck Search App and Windows Search.

1722833515875.png

1722833758411.png
 
on occasion i have had problems if i remove empty folders so i keep them because they are empty they dont take up any space.
 
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garlin said:
You're supposed to remove the Search components if don't want background services. A component includes all of the installed files, running Services, and reg entries for a provided feature. Tweaking your desktop settings won't stop any Services.

1. Load your image.
2. Click on the Compatibility icon from the Components toolbar. Uncheck Recommended to unlock protection for deletinig Windows Search
3. Uncheck Search App and Windows Search.

View attachment 12541

View attachment 12542
Click to expand...
Any side effect of this? for a long time I kept Windows Search service disabled, but this searchapp.exe keeps spiking and doing stuff, with indexing disabled, so something is making it do something, I am guessing easiest way to deal with it at this point is to just get rid of searchapp.exe.

Also from what I can find, there is no cortana app on the system. But I am not sure if I am checking correctly.
 
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Cortana doesn't exist for 24H2, but it appears for older Windows releases. Newer versions of SearchApp.exe are rewritten to use WebView2 which accounts for the occasional background activity.

You don't have to run Search if you can do without it, or use a 3rd-party desktop search tool.
 
garlin said:
Cortana doesn't exist for 24H2, but it appears for older Windows releases. Newer versions of SearchApp.exe are rewritten to use WebView2 which accounts for the occasional background activity.

You don't have to run Search if you can do without it, or use a 3rd-party desktop search tool.
Click to expand...
This is on my live 10 21H2 install, sorry should have mentioned.
After I installed the store app, a game started occasionally briefly freezing for a split second, on the 2 most recent stutters, it was searchapp.exe spiking, a i/o spike of 100s of MB/sec and CPU spike with it.
I have tamed it for now by pushing all priorities for it to lowest level, and cpu affinity to the e-cores on my CPU to remove scheduling bottleneck with games, but I dont want a run away process affecting stuff I interact with.

The only searches I use occasionally are.

cmd prompt (I know its not needed for this).
start menu search, not very often, I know this doesnt need indexing service, hoping not affected by searchapp.exe.
explorer search bar.

What is it with microsoft coding their software to keep doing stuff in background. This is why everyone is trying to debloat/disable everything.

I will probably make the changes you suggested on my 11 24H2 image, if there is no serious side effects for me.
 
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