Why can't my spotlight find anything?

Go to Terminal, type:

sudo mdutil -E /Volumes/ * (replace * with the mount point name you want to reindex)

Go to System Preferences/Spotlight/Privacy Tab and add your whole drive to the list, close the preferences.

Then go back to the Privacy Tab and remove your drive from the list.

After a couple minutes Spotlight should start to reindex your entire hard drive.

It takes awhile, but usually fixes this problem with the Find command also.

Hello ED:

If you mean, is it indexing, look at the spotlight icon on the menu bar. It will have a blinking dot in it while it indexes.

Barry

The menu bar icon doesn't blink while indexing. Mouse over the icon and a message displays with the percent completed.

If you read my post carefully, I did not say the icon blinked. There is a dot inside the icon which DOES blink while indexing is underway.

Barry

The blinking dot isn't very visible on my screen. Mousing over gives clearer and more useful info.

Try Leopard Cache Cleaner - rebuild Spotlight Metadata. Onyx has a similar function.

You can also search the drive that isn't being indexed for an invisible file that has a name like ".dontindex" and delete it.

OnyX? NO! Bad idea! Completely ruined my Leopard system. Had to reinstall. Maybe I was just unlucky, but others have had (slightly less serious) problems.

Of course, I see. When I had a similar problem, I turned to FileBuddy for its search abilities. I'm sure there's a freeware utility available that can accomplish the same, perhaps at Versiontracker.com.

run this command and paste the output back here in this thread:

sudo mdutil -s /Volumes/"root volume"

where "root volume" is the name you have given your (duh) root volume. I think it defaults to "Macintosh HD". Does it say "Indexing Enabled"? Try a spotlight search from the command line:

mdfind keyboard

Is there any output?