Getting rid of windows.edb

[Jeff Layman]

Googling reveals that there might be some problems in doing this. Eraser
might be able to deal with it, but has anyone tried deleting it at the very
least? If so, were there any problems?

I have now switched off all indexing, but this file still remains, and is
apparently still being updated (from the "date modified" column in Windows
Explorer). I am surprised that there is no option to delete the file if
indexing is turned off.

 

[Seth]

Googling reveals that there might be some problems in doing this. Eraser
might be able to deal with it, but has anyone tried deleting it at the
very least? If so, were there any problems?

I have now switched off all indexing, but this file still remains, and is
apparently still being updated (from the "date modified" column in Windows
Explorer). I am surprised that there is no option to delete the file if
indexing is turned off.

Have you also gone into services.msc and disabled the indexing service (this
is in addition to setting the system to not index)? If not, that should
stop the file form being updated and then make it OK to delete.

 

[Jeff Layman]

Have you also gone into services.msc and disabled the indexing service
(this is in addition to setting the system to not index)? If not, that
should stop the file form being updated and then make it OK to delete.

Thanks. Windows Search has now been stopped and disabled.

If all "Included locations" had been unchecked in "Indexing options", just
what was this service updating in windows.edb anyway?

 

[Seth]

Thanks. Windows Search has now been stopped and disabled.

If all "Included locations" had been unchecked in "Indexing options", just
what was this service updating in windows.edb anyway?

As I understand what I read, even though it isn't doing active indexing
(periodic scans of all files), it still updates the index when you access
individual files so it can get those files faster in the future.