Q: Lion Spotlight search broken? Always returns 1000's of results!

@ MHTechSolutions     Thanks for the tip turning off indexing seems to have stopped the beast

Turn indexing off for /

sudo mdutil -i off /

I will save the other commands after Apple fixes the issue..

Clear the metadata store for /

sudo mdutil -E /

Turn indexing back on for /

sudo mdutil -i on /

Was this a result of the .1 patch yesterday?

I worked with Apple support today here is what we did, seems to have fix this immediate issue of MDWorker taking all CPU resources

Move these files to the trash, do not delete,

/Library/preferences

com.apple.systemuiserver.plist

com.apple.spotlight.plist.lockfile

com.apple.spotlight.plist

restart MBP

If you had Indexer turned off

turn it back on from a terminal session

Turn indexing back on for /

sudo mdutil -i on /

Let the Indexes build

Hi there, I have tried the resetting of the ACL's but console still says:

(Normal) Import:  exceeded time/resource use limits after 12002 milliseconds, reason:1 - find suspect file using: sudo mdutil -t 1566230

every 12 seconds

I also stopped indexing, cleared the index and started it again, but mdworker still comes back with 100% CPU capacity...

After playing with Open Office as you did, the problem was still there. With Spring Cleaning I removed all the OO files I could find. After that, I restarted but that mdutil message is returning every 12 seconds. I read anonther items that says:

1) Using the mdutil command-line utility in Terminal, turn off indexing for each of your drives. example:

    $ sudo mdutil -i off /Volumes/your_hard_drive_name_1
    $ sudo mdutil -i off /Volumes/your_hard_drive_name_2

2) Then use mdutil to remove the indexes from each drive

    $ sudo  /Volumes/your_hard_drive_name_1
    $ sudo mdutil -E /Volumes/your_hard_drive_name_2

3) Physically remove the .Spotlight directories from the root of each drive.

    $ cd /
    $ sudo rm -fr .Spotlight-V100

(do the same for your second or third drive) BE CAREFUL WITH THAT RM COMMAND! One typo could ruin your day.

4) Use mdutil again to turn indexing back on for each drive

    $ sudo mdutil -i on /Volumes/your_hard_drive_name_1
    $ sudo mdutil -i on /Volumes/your_hard_drive_name_2

5) Spotlight will now re-index all drives and should behave in a normal fashion. (No longer uses 60%-80% of your CPU)

I did that already, with no succes... I very desperate what to do now!

I did some other things, but with no positive result. Found out that Stuffit deLuxe was making faults and upgraded to the latest version. Did some stopping indexing, remove Spotlight index and started indexing again. Same results. Perhaps this is something about the solution:

PSSniffer error: Invalid argument

or

Incorrect start/end range ordering; fixing.

I have tried so much, but nothing helps, still getting these messages, every 10 or 12 seconds

(Normal) Import:  exceeded time/resource use limits after 12003 milliseconds, reason:1 - find suspect file using: sudo mdutil -t 1566230

Today, I was able to spend some time on this issue. And found out what the culprit was: in the log in items there were 2 items with a mark behind it, they were not found anymore: magic menu and some other one...

Now, I don't get any of those anoying messages in console anymore. And, what is more important: my CPU gets some rest after all those days and week and months of exhausting hard work...

Bye and thanks for helping me...

Peter Paul from the Netherlands

and there it is again (click on it and it will expand...)

does it something have to do with baking u to my TimeCapsule?

Hi, folks! I took some time exploring this mean issue. I took the spotlight preferences and began to sort out which file or folder is the reason of the issue. After some 24 hours of waiting with trial and error, I found out the the folders EXTENSIS in the LIBRARY folder of the main USER is the culprit!!!!!

As a MAc user for many years (from 1985) I gathered some 22.000 fonts in Suitcase Fusion 3 now and that will be to much for Spotlight to index...

Now, my CPU gets some rest, after all those hours of being annoided by this not being able to index the FontDatabase of Suicace Fusion 3...

...sorry my somehow bad English

Problem has been resolved.

I repaired User account permissions using the Reset Password utility in the Lion Recovery Partition. This is different than Repair Permissions using Disk Utility.

Good description of how to do this here:

http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/how_to_resolve_user-level_permissions_iss ues_mac_os_x/

This solved my problem too!

(I had opposite problem, Spotlight returning no results despite having been reindexed multiple times.