Windows XP: How to properly stop Windows Search?

Question

System administration

Windows XP Question: Is there a better way to stop Windows Seacrh than through the Services MMC snap-in?
(As you know, in Windows, many things can be done in many ways, and one option may be somewhat worse than another.)
The question is closed.
Unfortunately, no one from the community has given it a correct answer; but it nevertheless was received by me as a result of research.
Before voicing it, I want to say a few words about the origin of the issue. It was sent by a Unixist friend of mine who spends days and nights in his black-and-green terminals. The question seemed easy to me, and I told him: “What is there to think about! Disable Indexing Services via MMC. To this, my friend objected: "My deep ignorance of Windows suggests that this may not be the right way."
The test showed that my friend was right in his doubts: my advice was really wrong.
Now - the answer: Windows Search, more precisely in XP - Windows Desktop Search, hereinafter - WDS, is an independent service that does not depend on the Indexing Service in any way. Those. when the Indexing Service is stopped, the WDS service will index the data.
The default WDS service in Windows XP (at least in Home Edition SP 2) is not installed, the corresponding distribution package can be downloaded from the Microsoft website. Installing WDS changes the interface of Windows Explorer, and stopping the service through the MMC console is an incorrect solution: in this case, searching through WDS stops working, and the standard search functionality - the well-known "Ace" character on the Explorer panel that appears when you press Ctrl + F - remains inaccessible.
This can be fixed by editing the specific registry key in regedit. I couldn't find an easier way.

Answer 1

C:\>net stop <service name>
I don't remember the name of the service, look it up in the snap-in. In general, net is an interesting thing, I advise you to read the documentation.

Answer 2

> moreover, one option may turn out to be somewhat worse than the other
oh...well, primerchik? :)

Answer 3

You can first disable scanning (for searching) for each partition of the disk(s). And then stop and block the autostart of the Windows Search service.