Is MS Indexing Service needed?

[kiddpete]

I was encountering a situation where something seemed to be scanning my C: each time the system booted. Boot time was reaching 20-30 minutes. Eventually, I turned off the Indexing Service on the drive. Boot time dropped to 3-7 minutes.

Does the index service provide much value? If so, is there a way to keep it from scanning the drive at each boot. My C: is currently approaching 300 gigs on a 500 gig drive.

 

[linney]

3 - 7 minutes is still a significant amount of time for a normal boot time. How are the times when booting into Safe Mode?

I have never used Indexing Service on XP and always disable it, in Vista I always have it enabled.

Configuring Windows XP's Indexing Service the right way

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-6346_11-5533688.html

Some things to look at generally.

FAQ779-4784 may help.

windows XP running very slow
thread779-796508

Disable, not uninstall, any unused network adapters

 

[devRyan]

You should really look into rebuilding that machine and including a partition just for the OS. Or adding a smaller, say, 40G drive solely for the OS.

But as far as the original question, no running Indexing service isn't necessary.