Search has stopped working. "The search service is currently offline...."

Question

Hi all,

I have come in this morning planning to do the SP2 install for sharepoint but noticed search has stopped working.

Errors

1. Search Settings Page

The search service is currently offline. Visit the Services on Server page in SharePoint Central Administration to verify whether the service is enabled. This might also be because an indexer move is in progress.

2. Event Log - Front End

Event Type:    Error
Event Source:    Office SharePoint Server
Event Category:    Office Server Shared Services
Event ID:    6482
Date:        04/07/2009
Time:        10:26:15
User:        N/A
Computer:    GOSPORT
Description:
Application Server Administration job failed for service instance Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchServiceInstance (416b9edd-a583-4d45-a246-16263ce22603).

Reason: Object fd3cb951-4bd1-45c3-b0dc-d21649b77972 not found.

Techinal Support Details:
System.Collections.Generic.KeyNotFoundException: Object fd3cb951-4bd1-45c3-b0dc-d21649b77972 not found.
   at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchApi.get_App()
   at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchApi.SetUsersPermittedToQuery(String[] userNames, Boolean force)
   at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchServiceInstance.Synchronize()
   at Microsoft.Office.Server.Administration.ApplicationServerJob.ProvisionLocalSharedServiceInstances(Boolean isAdministrationServiceJob)

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

3.  Before Noticing Problem I tried to perform a backup and got the error message.

Object Shared Search Index failed in event OnPrepareBackup. For more information, see the error log located in the backup directory. KeyNotFoundException: Object fd3cb951-4bd1-45c3-b0dc-d21649b77972 not found.

What I have tried

Restarted Servers in correct order
Restarted Search service in services.msc and using st command
Tried Resetting crawled content

Any ideas?

Can I stop the search under server services in Central Admin?  And safely say ok to the below message?

Are you sure you want to uninstall the Office SharePoint Server Search service from this server?
If you uninstall the Search service, this server will no longer accept search queries and all content index files will be permanently deleted.

Indexing will be unavailable for all Shared Services Providers that use this server as their index server.

To uninstall the Office SharePoint Server Search service from this server, click OK.
To return to the Services on Server page, click Cancel.

I guess the just creating a new search db and means I need to crawl data again?   and wont effect all my other SP content.

Thanks all, I hope someone is working on a Saturday :)

---

Spooter

Answer 1

The Resolution was

Uninstall the Office SharePoint Server Search service, re-start and re-attach the index database.

---

Spooter

Answer 2

I am getting exactly same error.

Can you explain bit more please?

What do you mean by Uninstall the Office SharePoint Server Search service?

And what do you mean by re-attach the index database?

If you can list the steps it would save my world.

I am getting this error since two weeks.

Cheers

Andrew