Getting your search service from starting to started

This may have been partly down to the SQL issues posted earlier (Databases created on SQL 2000 instead of SQL 2005); however i am not the only person to have come accross this so its definately worth a mention.

Microsoft recommend that in a farm environment you first start the Office Server Search Service on the Index server; in our case DEV02. Once up and running start the Query service on the Query server, DEV01.

When i started the Search Index service on DEV02 it hung on 'Starting' and after forcing a refresh gave the messgae 'Error Starting'.

To fix this:

I cannot definately say what fixed this or if it won't happen again but here's two ways in which i got it working:

Solution 1

1. Temporally enable Central Administration on the server running the search service (DEV02). (Central Admin is in our case then briefly running simultaneously on both the Office App & WFE Servers)
2. Start the Search Index service on the Index server (DEV02)
3. Start the Search Query service on the Query server (DEV01)
4. Disable Central Administration on the Index server (DEV02)

Solution 2

This was the solution that worked once the SQL issues had been resolved:

1. Start the Search Query service on the Query server (DEV01)
2. Start the Search Index service on the Index server (DEV02)