Just a quick little STSADM tip regarding the “Windows SharePoint Services Search” Service.

Recently during a MOSS implementation, the WSS Search Service wouldn’t start up with its status stuck on “starting” after filling in the appropriate details.

I tried several steps including stopping services, IISRESETs, several changes in CA with no luck.

In the end the fix was this simple STSADM command:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN>stsadm -o spsearch -action stop

It’s always easy when you know.