"1.  After you have installed SharePoint, go under Operations, and Services on the Server.

2.  Under there, start up Office SharePoint Server Search. If you get an Error when doing this the most likly cuase is that you have to prefix the Domain in front of all user names ie

ML234APPS\Admin etc

3.  Next, setup Shared Services for that farm.

4. Go to the Shared Services Administration website, and under there go to “Search Settings” under “Search”.

5. Under Search Settings -> Manage Content sources and Crawl Schedules. You should see a “Local Office SharePoint Server sites” setup for ya. You’d think this would do it – but no.

6. Click on that link and setup a schedule for “Full Crawl” and “Incremental Crawl”. If you want – start up a full crawl after you are done setting up this schedule.

7. You can specify other search engine criterion here – URLs to exclude in search results, various rules on following links/domains etc., the content access account (make sure this isn’t administrator – and you would have set this up anyway when you setup SharePoint server search in item #2), file types etc.

That’s it. Your search is ready to rock’n’roll. Go to your site – issue a search; should work now. " From a blog at http://blah.winsmarts.com/2006-11-Implementing_search_on_a_Sharepoint_2007_installation.aspx#feedback