Well it seems that windows search 4.0 in a server 2003/xp environment just doesn't work. I have logged the problem with technet, and had no reply.
The scenario most people want, is that your server indexes your main file store, then all your clients reference the central index.... rather than having hundreds of clients creating their own local index and hammering the server.
We have installed index 4.0 on server 2003....it works a treat, and has indexed 1,000000+ files. Searching from the server produces fast and reliable results.
However, try to search a shared drive on the said sever from an xp client, and the results are rather less impressive. "no results found". My hunch would be that the clients don't have any reference to or access to the index, but MS give no documentation on what is supposed to be a supported situation.
Couple this with the fact that we have our user archives stored on a shared drive (another great non-supported but no solution scenario), and you'll appreciate how highly unimpressed I am with Microsoft's efforts at producing a working index and search feature.
