Do you have a process that won’t die? Tired of searchindexer.exe calling you at home to harrass you for the rent? Do you have credit card debt?

Your solution is here! OK, what you want to do to prevent searchindexer.exe (searchprotocolhost.exe) from spawning everytime some MS product loads, just follow these simple steps:

1. Start > Run
2. Enter ’services.msc’ and hit Enter.
3. Find ‘Windows Search’
4. Punch the screen (just kidding)
5. Double-click (on the Win Search item)
6. Set ‘Start-up type’ to ‘Manual’.
7. Click the ‘Stop’ button if it is enabled (because that means the service is running)
8. Click the ‘Log On’ tab
9. Select each hardware profile item on the list, one at a time, and click ‘Disable’ for each one.

That should stop it from running without hacking your system to bits. Now, I have to say that I have NO IDEA what this is going to do to the searchability of your MS products. I mean, if Outlook is firing it up, it must be indexing your e-mail with it or something, so who knows what effects it could have ultimately. But in the mean time, enjoy the CPU time you’ll save, which I believe translates to energy savings as well. It must, right?

If I’m wrong, educate me.