Windows® Search service may not seem to slow down the PC, especially if you have a multi-processor CPU or oodles of system RAM. However, it can slow down your rig to a crawl if you lack the resources. So, if your PC has plenty of resources to spare and runs smoothly, you have no reason to use this tweak.

However, if you have a PC that is seriously low on the juice, then turning off this service will free up valuable CPU resources. This is because the service is always firing up and consuming resources, whenever you are creating a file, saving a file, or even receiving an e-mail on your Outlook or some other e-mail client. Windows® Vista is hard on the CPU anyway, so turning this service off may allow you to even run your PC a little faster. Microsoft warns that turning off Windows® Search service may slow down the searching procedure, but in the long run, the freed system resources provide a much better tradeoff.

In order to turn off the service, do the following:

1. Click on the “Start” button and then on “Run”.
2. In the box, type “Services” and hit Enter.
3. In the Services window, scroll through the list till you reach the entry “Windows Search Service”.
4. Double click on the entry.
5. Change the Startup type to either “Manual” or “Disabled”.
6. Click on Apply, then on Stop and finally on OK.
7. Wait for the service to stop and then exit the Services window.

This will stop the Windows Search Service and will possibly improve the performance of your PC to some extent. In future, if you do feel like starting the service again, then repeat procedures 1-4 given above and then change the Startup Type to “Automatic”. Apply the change and then click on Start. Wait for the service to start and then close the window. This will start the service once again.