Deleting the SharePoint2010 Search service application

To delete the Search service application, perform the following.

1. Go to Central Administration
2. Click on ‘Manage Services applications’ under Application Management.
   
3. Select the ‘Enterprise Search Service Application’ from the list of service applications. The name may differ as per your configuration.
4. Click on ‘X’ Delete button from the Ribbon.
   
5. Check the ‘Delete the content database as well’ option from the diaglog.
6. Click OK.

While deleting the search service application, the page hangs and keeps showing the same messaging like “Deleting the service application…..”. Even if you leave it untouched for hour or two or three like that… nothing happens, it would just hang on from the Central administration.

In such case, perform the below operations to get them cleaned fully from the Farm.

1. Get the Search Service application Id – You would get it when you click on the Search Service application from the Manage Service Applications page.
   
2. Execute the following STSADM command

   Stsadm -o deleteconfigurationobject -id f1d41cf0-50d0-4fcc-9087-344103757277

3. Connect to the DataBase Server
4. Delete the Search Service Application Specific databases (CrawlStoreDB, Application_DB and PropertyStore_DB ) manually.
   

Now that the Service application has been cleaned successfully. You could go ahead and configure the Search service application now.

Note:  STSADM command is still powerful in this case over PowerShell Command. Here is the PowerShell command as an alternative:

$spapp = Get-SPServiceApplication -Name "Enterprise Search Service Application"
Remove-SPServiceApplication $spapp -RemoveData

This is still taking 15 and more… and executing..

~ Gangadhar Kotu