Server 2019 - Windows Search Service feature, what does it do?

Question

Hi, I've been looking for an answer to this for quite a while now. What does enabling the 'Windows Search service' feature actually do? The 'Windows Search' service is already available when installing a 2019 server from the original media, albeit in disabled state. Enabling the 'Windows Search Service' feature does not enable it though.
The indexing options do only work when I manually enable the 'Windows Search' service (that was already there) and it works perfectly fine whether or not I enable the 'Windows Search Service' feature. Even on remote machines with a mapping to that drive.

So basically my question is, what does the 'Windows Search Service' feature actually install or do opposed to the already available 'Windows Search' service?

btw. is anyone else thinking this new QA forum is utter garbage compared to the Technet forums we had before? This tagging system drives me nuts, it just doesn't work well.

Answer 1

Hi, I'm currently working on a Citrix environment with FSLogix and I, too, cannot understand what is the use of that. From the official documentation of microsoft, it does say that this is required to make Windows Search work, but clearly it worked without the functionality installed and just the service started.

Any information on this topic would be highly appreciated.

On this topic it does say that "If the Windows Search Service is installed after Microsoft 365 applications, you must repair the Microsoft 365 applications from Add/Remove Programs", maybe this is indeed used by Windows component such as office ? https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fslogix/how-to-configure-search-roaming

Answer 2

The question is still unanswered.
I think someone from Microsoft should know what their own products are for...

Again, it's not about the pre installed and disabled search service, it's about the search feature you can install with server manager.
What is it doing?

Answer 3

I am just starting a project and intend not to use Windows Search, just the iFilters (from it). I.e. I feed the desired documents into C# code and get the text back which I drop into SQL Server Full Text Search. This allows me to use a web front end and restrict search scopes to user permissions stored in the database.

My development machine is Windows 10 and it purrs nicely, I have not been able to find clear documentation on which iFilters are installed with Server 2016 and 2019. Can someone point me to the documentation?

Answer 4

The OP's question still has not been answered:

"So basically my question is, what does the 'Windows Search Service' feature actually install or do opposed to the already available 'Windows Search' service?"

Answer 5

Do you really think I didn't try that? But below is the result. And note that I had to upload the screenshot elsewhere, as this MS QA won't let me upload a picture either. It just remains at 0% for a 48KB file.

So that's what happens, I just get errors all over. And what's with the bars in the section below? It's just empty but it should show types of notifications I want to receive. I posted at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/118491/qampa-is-just-terrible-compared-to-the-old-technet-1.html, after I made an actual feedback report. But that got deleted, or at least I can't even access that myself anymore.

For your actual answer to my question, again that doesn't help much. Also enabling or disabling search service does NOT remove any options from control panel. Al this 'might' or 'supposed to' or 'obvious' makes it even harder to grasp. Ohw and now there is a number of character limit on posti