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How to install Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express - including how to install on Windows Home Server

Enterprise Search Server 2008 Express 

I wrote about the search products the other day, but I then decided to take it for a spin.  The easiest server for me to install on was a Windows Home Server, so here is the process.

Download the software and run the setup program and run the preparation tool:

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Now run the installation tool.  For me, I don't want much installed on the C drive, but I do have some drives known as E and F.

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Once this is done, now go via the web to configure it.  I asked for it to crawl my file shares, web sites and more

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I then did a test search and it all worked :-)

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Now, when I went back to the WHS sites, things were not so good.  I discovered that the new site that Search Express clashed.  There was 2 things I needed to do.  One was to change the host header for the search site so that it did not clash with the default site.  This is done in IIS admin and if you need instructions on how to do this, just drop a comment for me to know.  Anyway, do this, but that was not enough.  It enabled the default web site to start, but now search was broken.  To fix that I had to set up SharePoint so that it knew about the new name for the site.

The place that documents this is http://store.bamboosolutions.com/kb/article.aspx?id=10460.  Use the information to create a new site for "SharePoint - 80".  Use the new host header you put in for the site and don't forget to add an entry to the DNS if needed!

That was it, Search installed and WHS back to normal.

 

ttfn

 

David


Posted Thu, Nov 8 2007 11:43 PM by David Overton

Comments

David Overton's Blog wrote Fixing the last 2 problems with my Search Server Express - DCOM error 10016 (application settings do not grant Activation Permission form COM) and Gather warning 2436 for Search Services on my home server
on Fri, Nov 9 2007 9:03 AM

Obviously when I wrote the last blog entry on installing search server , not quite everything was working

Search and High Performance Computing wrote More technical posts on Search Express...thanks to Dave Overton!
on Mon, Nov 19 2007 2:55 PM

Some nice 'how to' posts from Dave Overton here all around Search Express - I do want to make it very

jsmwalker wrote re: How to install Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express - including how to install on Windows Home Server
on Sun, Jan 27 2008 1:19 PM

Hi,

Thanks for the tuturial, is all up and working, indexing a file server, however when searching the site as a user it will only return results for documents actually created by those users, any ideas? (btw if logged in as a domain admin, it returns all results)

J

David Overton wrote re: How to install Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express - including how to install on Windows Home Server
on Sun, Jan 27 2008 1:25 PM

J,

For a file to show when a user does a search the user must be able to access the file.  Check the user has permissions for the file.  If they do, then it should come up in the search.

ttfn

David

jsmwalker wrote re: How to install Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express - including how to install on Windows Home Server
on Sun, Jan 27 2008 2:17 PM

Hi

Cheers for the quick reply, yep this is a general share for all the users, is very strange as it only seems to show files for which the user has explicit access. Running the indexing as administrator but i cant see why this would make any difference, and as i've said if i search using a domain admin account all the results come back.

Confused..

J

jsmwalker wrote re: How to install Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express - including how to install on Windows Home Server
on Mon, Jan 28 2008 10:18 PM

Hi David,

Just to update you, it looks good now, i did reset permissions from builtin user (domain users of course is part of, and the user was part of) to just domain users, however this still did not bring back the expected results while the system was crawling, however once completed it did seem to then sort itself out, so not sure if there is a delay reading permissions.... but all good.

Thanks

J

Kevin O'Shea wrote re: How to install Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express - including how to install on Windows Home Server
on Tue, Feb 26 2008 3:31 PM

Thanks for the information, I was hoping you might be able to shed some light on an issue for me?  SSE can crawl my intranet serve and our NAS fine, however it keeps erroring our on our WSS (on a seperate server) that it is failing to logon correctly I have used both the admin account and my personal account (both are in the site owners group) that has administrative privleges but it still come up with the following error:  Access is denied. Verify that either the Default Content Access Account has access to this repository, or add a crawl rule to crawl this repository. If the repository being crawled is a SharePoint repository, verify that the account you are using has "Full Read" permissions on the SharePoint Web Application being crawled. (The item was deleted because it was either not found or the crawler was denied access to it.)

David Overton wrote re: How to install Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express - including how to install on Windows Home Server
on Tue, Feb 26 2008 11:47 PM
Ken Adams wrote re: How to install Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express - including how to install on Windows Home Server
on Thu, Mar 13 2008 2:08 AM

Thanks for the great read !

Yours is the only write up on this topic on the web according to google !

I do have one problem I was hoping you might be able to help me with.

I followed your instructions, installed Search Server Express 2008 on Windows Home Server (WHS) with Share Point Services 3.0

My problem is that Search Server is not searching my WHS built-in shares. I have added the UNC paths to crawl sources like:

\\SERVER\videos

\\SERVER\music

\\SERVER\users

\\SERVER\public

\\SERVER\software

but when I start a full crawl of that source - it just ends instantly and goes idle. The crawl log shows that the default content access account does not have permission to crawl the share.

Have you tweaked any settings? Do you have a special crawl rule set up for your WHS file shares? Do I need to change the NTFS security permissions on the file shares ?

Thank you for your help in advance !

Simon C wrote re: How to install Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express - including how to install on Windows Home Server
on Sat, May 17 2008 11:55 AM

David, Excellent post but I cannot seem to install the Search Server 2008 Express on WHS. I download it to C: and then move it to Add-in folder in my WHS. Then Run and always get an error about Server 2003 SP1 not being installed. I tried to run SP1 from  Add-in and it won't run. Where am I going wrong? I'd really like to get the Google-type search on my WHServer and can't get it to work.. I do have all the MS software (SharePoint etc in full versions but don't think i need to use it on the WHS).

Your help would be appreciated.

Simon

Mike wrote re: How to install Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express - including how to install on Windows Home Server
on Thu, Aug 14 2008 8:37 PM

Do you know if there i a way to include the file name in a search?

i.e I have an indexed file named

"this is a test.doc"

The content of this doc does _not_ include the word "test".

But if someone searches for "test" I'd like to see it as a hit

Mike wrote re: How to install Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express - including how to install on Windows Home Server
on Thu, Aug 14 2008 10:00 PM

"Use advanced search, Luke"

and you can search for file name...

Rupesh Saxena wrote re: How to install Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express - including how to install on Windows Home Server
on Thu, Nov 27 2008 2:57 PM

Hi,

I have configured Search server express and configure the intranet share and crawl them. I have added users but when i tried with that user credentials it shows Access Denied. Though that user is also having permission on file server.

Thanks,

Rupesh

Rupesh Saxena wrote re: How to install Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express - including how to install on Windows Home Server
on Wed, Dec 3 2008 1:24 PM

Hi David,

I have recently configured Search server express 2008. i want if someone search by any file or folder name that query should not search inside the file text.  i am basically configuring this search server to search the software repository present on file server.

Thanks

Rupesh

David Overton's Blog wrote Fixing the last 2 problems with my Search Server Express - DCOM error 10016 (application settings do not grant Activation Permission form COM) and Gather warning 2436 for Search Services on my home server
on Thu, Jan 8 2009 8:49 PM

Obviously when I wrote the last blog entry on installing search server , not quite everything was working

Michael wrote re: How to install Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express - including how to install on Windows Home Server
on Thu, Jul 8 2010 5:53 PM

Hi,

thanks for the website. helped me to configure my searchserver.

I have one question, i set a new entry for my fileserver and put some unc path in it. the crawl is success, but when i search for an entrie, it doesnt give me any hits.

some ideas about it?

Thanks Michael

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