Correct way to disable indexing in Windows 7

"The previous two answers show you how to disable Windows search altogether. This also causes search boxes in various places to disappear, most notably the search box on the bottom of the Start menu and the search box at the top right of file explorers.

Personally, I like the search box in various places, I just don't want an indexing process to be running all the time. The main advantages of indexing are that it leads to faster searches, and to in-document searches and email searches. If you need neither of these, but want to keep Search in general, proceed as follows:

Do not turn off Windows search, or switch it back on via OptionalFeatures.exe. (reboot if necessary).
Go to the services control (either via Computer, right click, Manage; or by typing services.msc in the search box at the Start menu).
Find the Windows Search service, right click, Properties and set it to disabled at start up.
Reboot (not strictly necessary, but you won't be able to see whether it worked until you reboot).

Note that documents created after you do this will not be found by the search boxes. Windows search is based on indexes only and does not do the equivalent of a Unix find anymore (as it did in the Windows XP days).

You can occasionally switch on the Windows Search service and leave your computer on overnight to have it update the indexes.

A very good in-depth discussion of windows search can be found over at Wikipedia."

"After almost 30yrs of coding I have (understandably) become a huge fan of one-liner commands whenever possible - especially when it can replace an entire page of instructions/actions with fancy screenshots. :)

Here is the most proper, fully supported, and most efficient (hard to beat one short line of a single command) method to disable AND FULLY AND CLEANLY REMOVE the Windows Search (indexing) service on Windows 7 and later:

Open ""Command Prompt"" as administrator (must be performed as administrator)

Execute the following command:

dism /online /disable-feature /featurename:SearchEngine-Client-Package


Reboot

The best part is if you change your mind and later find you need/want the service, simply change the word ""disable"" to ""enable"" in the command and re-run it with a reboot to restore the service.

NOTE: One thing I would recommend performing BEFORE any action to abandon the Windows Search service is to follow these directions at the link below FIRST (only needed if you are an Outlook/Exchange user) to ensure ties between mail indexing and Windows Search are properly severed before removal or you may have issues disabling the mail indexing later:

support.office.com/en-us/article/Enable-or-disable-Instant-Search-97975193-8f1f-4f0e-b8cd-0cfd35a5703b"