I've installed Lion as an upgrade over my 10.6.8 install and found that Spotlight has been stuck on "Estimating Indexing Time" for over 4 hours.
Does anyone know how to fix this issue?
Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.7), Mac Pro 2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core, 6GB
I have the same promblem. Did you manage to resolve this?
Open Activity Viewer and look for a process called mds. Quit or Force Quit it to halt the indexing. You'll need to authenticate, as it's owned by root.
Thanks Daniel, but won't it just start up again at some point? And don't I want it to actually index the machine?
Yes it will. But hopefully, whatever it tripped and hung on won't happen again. If you continue to have problems, I'd recommend deleteing the hidden spotlight indexes from the root of each of your drives. Then it'll rebuild new ones, but that can take a while.
This fixed my problem:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2139016?answerId=10123757022#10123757022
Move all 3rd party Spotlight Importers to the Trash and restart, located in:
/Library/Spotlight
and
username/Library/Spotlight
3rd party plugins; ain't they great 😉
I have no luck to fix it by deleting the third party plugins in the library folder. It happened the moment i updated to version 10.7.5. Now it appears to use 2 days to finish indexing... I have tried include/exclude drives in privacy under spotlight, resetting PRAM, but useless. What I should do now?
Hi there,
had also an issue with Spotlight not indexing on my MBP after the OS X 10.7.5 update. At first I noticed that new files did not make it into the index - initiated re-indexing for a cure but Spotlight got stuck and showed up to 4 years remaining (screenshot).
My other Mac (2008 MacPro) did not have the issue following the 10.7.5 update.
I tried the following:
All the above did not solve the issue.
Solution on my MBP (it seems):
This morning I decided to reinstall OS X through Lion Recovery (Command-R during reboot) - obviously with a backup in place. Good news after completion of the installation: User accounts, applications and data all survived the reinstall.
The Spotlight issues seems fixed now - I got past the Spotlight 'estimation' process very quickly - a reasonable 40 minutes of indexing time remaining. Do hope it will complete successfully ....
Damage following 10.7.5 was not limited to Spotlight ...
Still left with Aperture broken on both of my Macs! Not sure if it was due to the new Aperture 3.4 release, the OS X update or the combination of both of them - grrrr. Will have a look tomorrow.
Follow up on my previous post
Spotlight fully operational again!
I managed to fix the Spotlight indexing performance issue (estimated time to re-index was 4 years) that came up after the update to OS X 10.7.5 by reinstalling Lion through the Lion Recovery function. All working now as it should - just a shame about time I had to spend fixing this problem.
Restarting the mds process solved it for me.
Thanks!
Did it for me. thank you.
Spotlight stuck on "Estimating Indexing Time"
