Spotlight off

Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.

Triple-click the line below to select it, then drag or copy the text — do not type it — into the Terminal window and press return:

mdutil -as

Post any lines of output that appear below what you entered — the text, please, not a screenshot.

You disabled Spotlight using Onyx or some equally worthless so-called "utility." If you remember how you did it, undo what you did and then delete the "utility." Never install it or anything like it again.

Otherwise proceed as follows.

Back up all data.

If you have more than one user account, you must be logged in as an administrator to carry out these instructions.

Triple-click the line below to select it, then drag or copy into the Terminal window — do not type — and press return:

sudo launchctl list | grep metadata

You'll be prompted for your login password, which won't be displayed when you type it. You may get a one-time warning not to screw up. You don't need to post the warning. If you don’t have a login password, you’ll need to set one before you can run the command.

Post any lines of output that appear below what you entered — the text, please, not a screenshot.

You didn't enter the command correctly. Please review the instructions and try again. There may not be any output, but if there is, it won't be that.

There is no output. The command prompt shows that you're in a directory named "LaunchAgents." That's odd, but I'm not going to speculate about it.

Back up all data.

Enter these commands, one at a time, in the same way as before (no typing):

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist
sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.scan.plist
sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.spindump.plist

That should enable Spotlight. If it doesn't, reinstall OS X. Get rid of the "utilities." Permanently.

Hello:

Just open a Terminal and type this :

sudo mdutil -i on /

That will enable indexing

Then type:

sudo rm -rf /.Spotlight*

That will delete the Spotlight indexing database

And then type:

sudo mdutil -E /

That will rebuild the database. It may take a while.

Good luck