>Hi Al,
>
>>If by "indexing" you mean file search indexing in Windows (File) Explorer, there's no way that should have disabled OE.
> No, This is what I did:
> control panel
> selected "Add or Remove Windows Components"
> clicked on "Add/Remove Windows components"
> unclicked "Indexing Service"
>
> Later, when I saw the Outlook Express would not open my existing emails, I went back and turned "indexing Service" back on and restarted the computer but I still could not open the emails.
> One interesting thing: when I go back to the dialogue where I deselected and re-selected "Indexing Service", it shows 0 bytes, which suggests that it could not reinstall the indexing service. Perhaps the "Reindexing Service" is actually not installed. Do you know how I can actually reinstall "indexing service"?
> I hate messing around with the OS. I will never touch it again, arghh.

Yes, that's the indexing service used by (File) Explorer. It's a background process, it should have no effect on the functionality of OE. It's probably something else that caused that issue - antivirus, disk problem, computer crash or improper shutdown etc. You might check your System and Application Event Logs around the time you first noticed the problem with OE.

Overview at http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/windows-and-office/configure-windows-xps-indexing-service-the-right-way/ .