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Information Technology Services

Network File Storage/Steamboat Update

ITS will be un-installing the update to the Windows Desktop Search engine (WDS) that was automatically installed by Microsoft on many campus workstations several weeks ago. This update coincided with and was therefore confounded by several other issues with the network file system, which is why it took so long to identify this particular problem.

This utility appears to be indexing a large number of documents on Steamboat, flooding the system with indexing requests from over 1300 workstations. Sun engineers were monitoring the file system from California this morning as our staff tested this hypothesis. When we stopped the indexing, the utilization dropped to about 30% of the peak and when we re-instated the indexing, the utilization immediately peaked again.

We think that un-installing the utility will go a long way towards solving the sluggishness problem. This process should be transparent to you.

A number of folks have provided feedback during this investigation that your workstations have been performing sluggishly as a result of this recent update as well.

• Uninstalling Windows Desktop Search Engine 3.01  (For those of you whose workstations are *not* under ITS management and you wish to remove the software on your own).
• Locate the Add/Remove Programs item in the Control Panel. Select "Windows Desktop Search 3.01" and click Remove.
• Re-installing Windows Desktop Search Engine 3.01 (For those who have found that the tool is one you wish to continue to use, you may re-install the service by downloading from the URL below. For obvious reasons, we discourage this until we find a way for the tool to have less impact on the file system.)

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/
desktopsearch/default.mspx 

and click the "Get WDS 3.01" link on the right.

As an explanation, but not an excuse for our difficulty in identifying this as a cause, you may be interested to know that Microsoft issued a public apology for installing this update "silently" and without user input. See for example:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/25/windows_update_snafu/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/09/14/microsoft_dispels_stealth_
update_rumors/