How do I disable Windows Search Indexing Service while on battery on Windows 7?

Question

Since upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7, I've found laptop battery life is reduced.

One issue is that the Windows Search Indexing Service is constantly running, even when on battery power. Using Resource Monitor shows it is often the top consumer of CPU time and top producer of disk activity. I imagine this is one of the primary reasons the battery is getting drained faster.

I cannot find any options to tell Windows Search Indexing Service to not index while on battery power.

The only solution seems to be to stop the service, and also disable the service (if you just stop it, it will restart itself after a while). Doing this gives me considerably more battery life, but it's a pain because I have to re-enable the service when plugged in again.

Is there a better solution?

Answer 1

There's a group policy setting for this. Go to Start -> Run (or Winkey+R), type gpedit.msc. Navigate to Local Computer Policy -> Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Search. Enable the policy "Prevent indexing when running on battery power to conserver energy"

Answer 2

Check out this indexing gadget from Brandon. It lets you monitor and pause the indexing. However, I'm hoping someone has more information about how to do this automatically.

Answer 3

If you're only running NTFS partitions and don't want to search inside files, you should seriously consider the "Everything" search engine. It doesn't index your files the traditional way and is always up to date.