kellyjl,  I had a similiar problem with my 'search' feature.  It was after a tweak of the Windows registry.  The tweak was removed and everything was fine after that.

If you did a registry tweak, or installed a program recently, try removing it to see if search comes back.

John - I'm sure you're right about the source of the problem.  The 'search' has been locking up for several months now, and I don't even know what programs I've installed since it stopped working. As for the registry change, there's only one that I know of and that was last week, long after the search stopped working.  Do you know of any way I can determine what might need to be "tweaked"?

OK, you might try and disabling the index feature and then enable it again.  Look at this web site for restoring the 'search' feature in start, Line 166  and/or the index disable, Line 41

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm

 

kellyjl,

Although the 'search' function did not work from the start menu, I had the 'search' function from Windows Explorer.  Click on any folder in your Program Files and try the 'search' at the top in the toolbar.

Do not know of any tweak to get this back, but will look.