How To Remove Search Service Application In Sharepoint 2013

SharePoint 2013 — Reset Index Partition in Search Service Application

Recently I experienced an issue with the Search Service Application on SharePoint 2013 that made all search queries and any search features on farm result in an Unexpected Error notice. From the Correlation ID, ULS logs showed an error message that read, "Index lookup failed to work since no active index cell was available."

After several hours of investigation, it became clear that the problem is part of the Index Partition and SharePoint Search Host Controller services.
Reason: The problem came from the Search Service application. Systems can experience errors with Index Partition components; in this case, all content queries from web pages and SharePoint sites could not render correctly.

[read more: how to reset the id field in sharepoint]

To check this component, you can follow the SharePoint Powershell script to review the index component's state.

PS > $ssa = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication PS > Get-SPEnterpriseSearchStatus -SearchApplication $ssa -Text

Resolution: We tried to reconfigure the indexing component from the SharePoint Search Service Application and clean up errors in indexing content by following these steps:

Step 1: Check if Search Service Application Crawling and Indexing are running or paused in SharePoint.

You can run this command in the SSA management console to verify if the Search Service Application is paused.
$ssa.IsPaused() -ne 0

If output of this command returns False, the SSA is running. If this command returns True, the SSA is paused and you have to switch it to running. This article will tell you more about why you might receive a True (paused) command return: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn745901(v=office.15).aspx

Common Error Cases Message: Search Service Application is paused for reason(s) other than Index Repartitioning. If you don't care why you may have received a Paused command return, then you can run the below command and try to force the SSA to resume: $ssa.ForceResume($ssa.IsPaused())
If you cannot successfully resume SSA, skip this step and go to Step 2.

Step 2: Run Services.msc with administrator permissions and try to stop the following services:

SharePoint Timer Service
SharePoint Search Host Controller

Step 3: Delete all data directory content from location

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\15.0\Data\Office Server\Applications\Search\Nodes\[Hex ID\IndexComponentN\storage\data\

*Note: If you installed the SharePoint folder in another drive, change C drive to your installed folder.
Now restart the following services: SharePoint Timer Service SharePoint Search Host Controller

Step 4: Reset Search Indexing content.

On the SharePoint Central Administration home page in the Application Management section, click Manage service applications.
On the Manage Search Applications page, click the search service application for which you want to reset the search index.
On the Search Administration page under System Status, verify that the Administrative Status of the search service application is Running and not Paused.
On the Search Administration page in the Crawling section, click Index Reset.
On the Index Reset page, verify that the Deactivate search alerts during reset check box is checked, then click Reset Now.
In the confirmation dialog box that appears, click OK to confirm that you want to reset the index.
Step 5: Start Full Crawl again.

Since we reset the indexing content, you need to re-run full crawl to make the Search Service App crawl all configured content and make search data available. After completing these steps, Search Topology should work fine and display green checks (as seen below).

Root Cause: The problem may stem from a Windows update from Jan 2016; the SharePoint server automatically runs Windows updates installed for many Microsoft packages, so this may have impacted SharePoint Search Service and interrupted Index Partition.