sharepoint search is not working - sharepoint

Question

I have an issue with SharePoint search.
The situation
The server is installed with
SharePoint on a farm with 2 servers.
A new app pool is created and that app pool is using a domain account called moss_service.
moss_service is set to be in the administrator group in both server.
moss_service is also set to be the db_creator in the content database.
When I checked it initially, the search's default content access account is using another different account, I changed that to be using moss_service account.
I didn't do IIS reset because this is a production server, they dont want frequent iis reset.
Strangely, checking the services.msc under "office sharepoint server search" the account is still using an old one. (and apparently it's only running on 1 server, the other server is not running) I then change that to the following:
domain\moss_service with the password.
and then I rerun the crawl.
How do I diagnose the issue
Basically everytime I change something I restart the crawl and then check the event viewer. Multiple things come out but the following is the major ones:
The start address cannot be
crawled. The password for the content
access account cannot be decrypted
because it was stored with different
credentials. Re-type the password for
the account used to crawl this
content. (0x80042406)
Performance monitoring cannot be
initialized for the gatherer object,
because the counters are not loaded or
the shared memory object cannot be
opened. This only affects availability
of the perfmon counters. Restart the
computer.
Access is denied. Check that the
Default Content Access Account has
access to this content, or add a crawl
rule to crawl this content.
(0x80041205)
Crawl Logs Result
The crawl log is showing this:
The password for the content access account cannot be decrypted because it was stored with different credentials. Re-type the password for the account used to crawl this content.
I tried changing it again at service.mstsc and the rerun the full crawl again but then it doesn't work. I have tried entering it using the following way:
moss_service#domain.local
and
domain\moss_service
My Questions are:
How do I fix this?
Is this the right way to setup the
search?
Does the search account has to be
using a different domain account?
Seemed like one fix complicates the
other, how do I set this right?
Is it worth it to upgrade to sp2?

Answer 1

Google this you will get answer " Access is denied. Check that the Default Content Access Account has access to this content, or add a crawl rule to crawl this content. "

Answer 2

Alex, I think you need to completely reconfigure the search services. Keep in mind that the search crawler should be an account with least privileges (not your application service account!). Also, the indexer only runs on one server and whether the search crawler runs on one or more machines is another configuration issue. Also, some settings changes (like changing the crawled File Types) even require the search engine to be restarted.

Answer 3

The start address cannot be crawled. The password for the content
access account cannot be decrypted because it was stored with
different credentials. Re-type the password for the account used to
crawl this content.
For this error,
Open the Sharepoint administration
Click on "Application Management"
Click on "Manage service applications"
Click on "Search Service Application"
Click on the current value for "Default content access account" and re-enter the user's password, or update to another admin user.