Q: Spotlight crashes and re-indexes over and over
I am re-posting about a problem I have been dealing with for several days now. I had MISTAKENLY posted that I had the problem solved, only to have it return in about three days. While I can turn off Spotlight and do my work using EasyFind, it is greatly disrupting my ability to be efficient. Mr. Eric and Mr. Linc have been helping a great deal and I hope they will forgive my stupidity for thinking I had resolved the Spotlight issues. Below is a brief summary of my situation and what I've tried. My original post can be found here.
I have a seven year old computer that has been my work computer. Like me, it was getting a little slow and old and I wanted to move my work to my newer three year old computer, partially out of fear that the older computer might die a sudden death. I had had an occasionally crash of Finder on my newer computer, but nothing all that frequent, and no other issues. Spotlight worked like a champ. Then I mistakenly used Migration Assistant to migrate my work account to the newer computer. In a matter of a few days, Spotlight began to freeze, requiring Activity Monitor to close it. Shortly thereafter, I noticed that Spotlight was indexing over and over. It would work briefly in between indexing, but would start all over again after only a short period of use. I have tried about everything I could find on the internet to get it to work including moving my 500Gb of data in my work account to the "Shared" user account, deleting the work account, which seemed to have triggered all the problems, re-creating the account and starting over. It seemed to work for about three days, then Spotlight started freezing again and then once again started re-indexing over and over and I had to turn it off once again. I have posted crash logs as recommended by Linc Davis on this link and on Pastebin.
I don't want to waste anyone's time so I'll try to list the steps I've taken:
1) Moved my Hard drive into Privacy settings and back out to cause re-indexing
2) Deleted Sophos Anti-virus software
3) Deleted Flip4Mac
4) Deleted the Spotlight-V100 file and rebooted into Safe Mode as recommended by Linc here.
5) Restarted Spotlight using Terminal commands
6) Moved data to Shared account, deleted work account, again deleted Spotlight-V100, booted in safe mode, then rebooted
7) Recreated work user account, moved data back. Worked for about three days, then started freezing, then re-indexing
8) Deleted Wacom tablet software that I had mistakenly tried to install to get my Wacom tablet to work with newer computer (I forgot to put that step on my earlier post)
9) detached all peripherals (an extra monitor, a printer and a scanner). Only my mouse, keyboard and wireless trackpad are in use.
10) Using Onyx, rebuilt permissions, deleted all caches
11) Deleted Spotlight.prefs
12) Again deleted Spotlight-V100 folder, which I've done multiple times
13) Rebooted in Safe mode, which I've done multiple times
14) Stopped all auto login apps
15) Deleted some duplicate files in different user accounts
16) Moved my suspect account home folder into Privacy setting in Spotlight prefs, started using another admin user account for a while, only to have Spotlight lock up in it, with Console giving similar info such as "XPC connection was invalidated". Going back in to my work user account (with it's home folder still in Privacy), Spotlight began indexing again. I again moved my Hard Drive into Privacy setting in Spotlight to shut it off so I could try to get some work done.
I have never had anything like this happen in the twenty years I've used Macs. I am deflated at this point and would appreciate any additional suggestions. I fear I'm going to have to re-install my OS and that would take days to get everything set back up. Even that is not my biggest fear. My big fear in re-installing the OS is that it might not solve the problem, since I've read in various places of others trying that option only to have the same Spotlight issue re-appear.
I have to be out of town starting Monday next week and won't be at my computer but will be here today and Sunday to try any suggestions. I'll be monitoring the forum on my iPhone while away and will try any and all options upon my return Saturday.
If you've read all the way to this point, I thank you for your patience!
Posted on Jul 16, 2016 1:06 PM