Since I got my new laptop I have had a problem that the Windows Search services in Windows 7 keeps setting itself to be Disabled whenever I restart the the PC. I usually notice this when I try to do a search in Outlook and I have to press enter in the search box to start a search, it is not matching emails as soon as I start to type.

If I load the services control panel I can enable the Windows Search service and start it manually, restart Outlook and everything is as I expect, but all a bit of a pain to do. I checked the Windows event logs, and it said nothing about Windows Search apart from my manual starting of the service.

Seems the issue was that I had set the service’s start-up action to be Automatic – Delayed. When I set it Automatic then it seems to start Ok. All I can assume is that something else in the start-up process is not completing soon enough so the delayed start search search never bother to even try, but I surprised there is nothing in the log, but it is working now!