How to fix Spotlight in 10.7.5?

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How to fix Spotlight in 10.7.5?

I've recently reinstalled OS X Lion 10.7.5 on a newly-reformatted HD, reinstalled all of my applications fresh, and copied my documents back from an external HD. With my "fresh new" system, I have a big problem - Spotlight indexing is not working. The Spotlight menu reports that it will take days to index my drive (currently the total is 6 days), and each day the time increases. As a result, I cannot find anything on my computer. I live and die by my email using MS outlook 2011, and since Outlook 2011 uses Spotlight for searching email, I can't search email either. This makes my "brand new" computer seriously unusuble (it's a mid-2011 MacBook Pro.)

I've been scouring forums, and have found I'm not the only person with this problem. I've tried basically all of the fixes other people have reported, including:

1) Rebooting

2) Adding my HD to the list of volumes not to be indexed in the Spotlight control panel's Privacy tab, then removing my HD from that list - supposedly this forces a re-index.

2) Re-indexing my HD using the following terminal commands: sudo mdutil -E / ; sudo mdutil -i on /

4) Removing the spotlight cache: rm -rf /.Spotlight-V100

5) Repairing all permissions in my home directory using the resetpassword utility on my lion recovery HD

None of these have worked. Spotlight menu still reports that it will take days to reindex my HD, and each day I wait, the tally increases. Spotlight is clearly not workig. I've been struggling with this for days now and am at the end of my rope. I need to be able to search my email. I need to be able to search my computer. Any other ideas? My remaining possibilities are:

1) Upgrade to Mountain Lion - however, people on Mountain Lion forums report similar Spotlight problems with 10.8.2.

2) Complete OS reinstall, perhaps to 10.7.4 where I did not have this problem. A day wasted reinstalling, but worth it if it solves the problem.

3) Visit to Apple Store Genius Bar in hopes of a miracle.

Any other ideas/thoughts/suggestions?

-Tim DeBenedictis

Southern Stars

MacBook Pro (15-inch Early 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.5)

Posted on Sep 30, 2012 10:09 AM

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Answer 1

timmyd7777 Author

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Sep 30, 2012 10:17 AM in response to timmyd7777

Here's one more bit of information from the Console:

9/30/12 10:09:32.361 AM com.apple.mdworker.i386.0: objc[2130]: Class NLAssertionHandler is implemented in both /Applications/Microsoft Office 2011/Microsoft Outlook.app/Contents/Library/Spotlight/Microsoft Outlook.mdimporter/Contents/MacOS/../../../../../../../Office/mbuinstrument.fra mework/Versions/14/mbuinstrument and /Library/Spotlight/Microsoft Office.mdimporter/Contents/MacOS/../Frameworks/MetroFramework.framework/Version s/12/MetroFramework. One of the two will be used. Which one is undefined.

9/30/12 10:09:32.456 AM mdworker32: kCGErrorFailure: Set a breakpoint @ CGErrorBreakpoint() to catch errors as they are logged.

I see these messages repeated periodically in the Console, output by mdworker. Do these messages indicate some kind of MS Outlook plugin problem that might be preventing Spotlight from working? I'm running Outlook for Mac 2011 version 14.2.4 (120824). Bear in mind the exact same Outlook version was running without any trouble before my Lion 10.7.5 reinstall, and works just fine on an older MacBook Pro running 10.6.8. Spotlight worked OK on this machine (before my 10.7.5 reinstall) and works just fine on my 10.6.8 MacBook Pro.

-Tim

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Answer 2

macampa

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Oct 6, 2012 10:34 AM in response to timmyd7777

I had the same problem. Installing the supplemental update http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1599 fixed it. It should work for you too.

Ale

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