Spotlight not working at all & I can't revive it

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Level 2

335 points

Spotlight not working at all & I can't revive it

Running 10.8.5 on my work computer, Spotlight has suddenly stopped working at all (zero search results). I've tried many things to get it back: Cocktail, Onyx, Terminal commands found on the web (sudo mdutil commands and other sudo commands to delete and rebuild the Spotlight database), and the simple Spotlight Privacy tab trick which yields a Privacy List Error message that sparked this whole silliness.

A lot of search results for this issue point to this article: http://osxdaily.com/2007/02/15/spotlight-wont-work-fix-a-broken-spotlight-menu-w ith-these-troubleshooting-tips/

I have done them all except #3, which I was just about to attempt when the mac completely freaked out and I lost my menu bar and all the icons from the Desktop vanished. Being logged in remotely with Logmein, I'm stuck until a coworker can force reboot it for me tomorrow. In any case, all this effort should have resulted in a behaving Spotlight, but no joy. I've even reinstalled the OS in hopes it would kick something in the head and make it work.

My HDD permissions are set to allow Read & Write for my username plus whatever the defaults are.

I could just do without Spotlight, but things like this make me wonder if something else is going wrong and this is just a symptom. It wasn't that long ago that DiskWarrior was run for maintence (maybe a couple months ago), and Disk Utility's Verify Disk came up clean (for whatever that's worth).

Anyone have any thoughts on what's left to do besides an erase and re-install everything (which would take me about two days that I really don't have to spare)?

Mac Pro 2.66GHz 12-core

OS 10.8.5 with all software updated (except maybe iTunes)

24GB RAM

Posted on Feb 8, 2014 3:06 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

dianeoforegon

Level 5

7,287 points

Feb 8, 2014 3:40 PM in response to MyKidsDad

Boot from your recovery drive and folldow the steps here to reset your permissions. After you boot back into your drive it will reindex your entire drive.

Use OS X Recovery Disk Assistant to reset Your files and folder permissions

Testing in a new User will quickly tell you if the problem is system wide or if it's your User's folder that contains the problem. You'll need to put some data in Shared folder for access in the new User to test. Drag from Shared (it actually copies) your test files and place them on the Desktop in the new User.

CREATE A NEW USER

Go to System Preferences --> Create a New User in Accounts. Switch to the New User by logging out/in or use Fast User Switching.

Do you still see the issue?

If yes, then the problem is with your base files.

If no, then the problem is in your User's folder.

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Answer 2

MyKidsDad Author

Level 2

335 points

Feb 10, 2014 12:18 PM in response to dianeoforegon

Thank you for the reply! Well, oddly enough, I've just discovered that I don't have a Recovery partition. I have no idea why. I upgraded from 10.7, so I would have thought between that OS and this one that a Recovery volume would be present. :/

Cocktail crashes whenever I try to do anything with it, so I'll try downloading either Onyx or Maintenance and see if I can reset the permissions/ACLs from there and report back when I do.

Incidentally, this whole mess started not only with a non-functioning Spotlight but also the error message after launching Cocktail: Unable to detect Spotlight indexing status. "Mac HDD" is not accessible, read-only or mdutil (/usr/bin/mdutil) is not working properly.

I did try the new user suggestion and had the same issue on the new user.

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Answer 3

MyKidsDad Author

Level 2

335 points

Feb 11, 2014 9:32 AM in response to dianeoforegon

Well, just as weird as how this all came about, and as weird as the journey was between then and now, suddenly this computer indexed the boot drive out of nowhere. ???

The only thing that changed between Friday and today was there was a keyboard shortcut conflict that I found in the Spotlight Preference Pane. For reasons unknown to me, there was a yellow warning symbol beside both keyboard shortcut assignments at the bottom of that Pane, yet I couldn't find any other assignments to those key combinations. Just for the fun of it, I disabled both of those shortcuts (unchecked the check boxes). Now I have an indexed hard drive. How can these things possibly be related??

I know nothing else is assigned to these shortcuts cuz when I do them on the Finder, nothing at all happens.

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Answer 4

Feb 11, 2014 6:03 PM in response to MyKidsDad

It would be nice to know what fixed the indexing but be thankful that it's working.

To create a recovery drive on an external drive see:

OS X: About Recovery Disk Assistant

You might also find this post helpful.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1153706

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Answer 5

MyKidsDad Author

Level 2

335 points

Mar 16, 2014 9:21 AM in response to dianeoforegon

Well, I got super swamped with work, so I haven't been able to try the Recovery Disk thing. Somehow the computer also went back to not having a functioning Spotlight soon after our exchange here. I'm still swamped in work and won't have any opportunity to further investigate. If I do eventually find a solution, I'll post it here just for the sake of helping anyone else who finds this thread. I appreciate your feedback!

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