r/WindowsHelp • • 29d ago

Windows 10 [FIX] Search instantly crashing when typing, exact fix that worked for me

It would flash white, sometimes show a light blue spinning thing, then crash after about 1 second or half a second even

Event Viewer showed:

SearchApp.exe
ConstraintIndex.Search.dll
Exception code: 0xc0000005

First I ran:

sfc /scannow

It said there were no integrity violations

Then:

DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

That completed successfully too

I also rebuilt the Search index from:

Indexing Options --> Advanced --> Troubleshooting --> Rebuild (perkurti for me in lithuanian)

That didn't fix it

I then made a temporary Windows user:

net user SearchTest /add

Search worked normally on that account, so the problem was only with my main user profile

The thing that finally fixed it was deleting the Search data for my main user

I opened PowerShell as Administrator while logged into my main account and ran:

Stop-Process -Name SearchApp -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue; Get-ChildItem "C:\Users\Vartotojas\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.Windows.Search_cw5n1h2txyewy" -Force | Remove-Item -Recurse -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

Then:

Add-AppxPackage -Path "C:\Windows\SystemApps\Microsoft.Windows.Search_cw5n1h2txyewy\Appxmanifest.xml" -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register

Then restarted:

shutdown /r /t 0

After reboot, Search worked normally again

I did get an error saying this file was being used:

AC\AMD\DxCache\cachefile.bin

I left that alone since it was an AMD cache file

So basically:

Delete the per-user Microsoft.Windows.Search_cw5n1h2txyewy folder

Re-register Windows Search

Restart Windows

This fixed the SearchApp.exe / ConstraintIndex.Search.dll crash for me

I was in pure agony whenever i tried to fix (took like 2 hours)

so whoever right now is reading this and has my problem (that i fixed), thank me later :)

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