Bug report • Re: Indexing of Properties repeats itself chaotically and causes Everything and system crashes

It does not limit the memory? I do not understand then: because if I set max amount of RAM that Everything is suppose to have access to - then I expect any requests for more memory above that limit to be accommodated with substitute in form of space on disk - i.e. that Everything will use the pagefile.sys after exceeding the limit imposed with that option

Yes, you are correct, max_working_set_size will limit the physical memory.
Everything can still allocate more memory, but this will page other memory to disk.
You never want this to happen, it will kill system performance.

Does Everything use pagefile.sys in general, but when this option is used then it does not

The OS manages memory, RAM and the pagefile.
I don't really have control.
You can use min_working_set_size, max_working_set_size and virtual_lock to hint to the OS to never page to disk, but if Everything allocates large amounts of ram, paging can still occur.

If you want to use min_working_set_size and max_working_set_size, please make sure they are set to value higher than the RAM usage of Everything. (Never less than the RAM usage of Everything -it's fine to overshoot, so set it to your total RAM size)

- and thus it is possible for it to choke / crash itself and / or the whole systems?

The whole system will feel sluggish, it shouldn't crash, unless there's something up with your disk or a very low resource issue.

Or perhaps it creates some sort of its own version of pagefile.sys - and if yes, then can user pick which volume / path should be used for this?

No, Everything will never do this.
Everything wants to be in RAM.
Searching from disk defeats the purpose of Everything.
Search the Windows Index with si: in Everything if you want to store indexed information on disk.

What will do the killing?

Accessing memory that has been paged to disk.
Windows is very good at knowing what to page to disk.
However, when Everything needs to access memory that has been paged to disk, it means the system has to swap out something else to disk and load in the desired memory from disk. This will cause Everything to hang, and depending on your disk, will also cause the system to hang.

The mere fact of using this feature - or the amount of max RAM value [in relation to my database size] I have chosen?

Your min_working_set_size and max_working_set_size are too low, set them to the size of your total RAM.
but be aware that if Everything actually allocates all your RAM its going to leave the system with very low resources.

please send a debug log

Sure, I can and want to

But I just do not know how long I would have to wait for re-indexation to occur.

Ah, I thought Everything was stuck in a reindexing loop and the reindexing occurred immediately.



So if Tools -> Debug -> Statistics -> Build -> Last Rebuild Reason is still showing:
Out of date NTFS volume C: is available

Then the issue is either:
Everything is not always running in the background.
Too many changes occurred while Everything was not running.
Something is deleting your USN Journal (not likely)
Something is spamming your file system with changes.
Everything is not saving your index to disk on exit.

Yes, I can easily evoke it by closing and re-opening of Everything - but this initial one will end at some point, after which Everything seems lately to be working A-OK in this regard. Or is the Debug Logging sustained between sessions of Everything? Because if it is sustained then I think it will be better to start it after one re-indexation is finished, so that [next] 1st one will be clean recorder from the get-go

The log is overwritten if you exit and restart Everything.
One way to capture exactly what is going on is:

• Wait for Everything to do a reindex.
• Terminate Everything:
  • In Everything, type in the following search and press ENTER:
    
    /exit-now
• Launch Everything with:
  
  C:\Program Files\Everything\Everything.exe -debug-log
• Everything should immediately start reindexing.
• Wait for Everything to complete reindexing. (don't worry about property indexing completing)
• From the File menu, under the Debug submenu, click Stop Debug Logging...
  ---This will open your %TEMP%\Everything Debug Log.txt in Notepad.
• Please upload this file in a bug report.

Statistics: Posted by void — Mon Oct 13, 2025 1:12 am

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