I have seen a lot of issues with the "No Indexers" issue when installing and configuring a SharePoint installation in Farm Mode.  In a recent setup I came across it and thought I would put a post out there for people that may be encountering it for the first time.  The "No Indexers" issue surfaces when trying to configure your first Shared Service Provider (SSP) after setting up SharePoint for the first time.  There are a few reasons this can happen, all of which are fairly simple to resolve but somewhat annoying as well.  <!--more-->

The first reason is that you may have simply forgot to install Search Service when installing.  This can happen in Farm Mode setups if you select "Web Front End" instead of "Complete".  This to me is a little misleading for the first time installer because you most likely are attempting to install the Web Front End Server of the Farm and pointing it to a database.  It does not clearly state that this is for an existing farm.  Combine that with the fact that Complete install makes you think it will install a SQL Database as well on the server (unless you read the fine print of course) it is understandable.  Easy enough to fix though, but this is where it becomes a pain.  You have to uninstall then reinstall to get the desired result.  Good thing the uninstall doesn't drop your config database you may have already set up.

The second reason is the easier of the two.  The indexer service may not be started on a server.  In Central Administration.  Go to Operations tab and then look at the Topology of the farm setup.  Is "Office SharePoint Server Search" service started on the desired server?  Change to the desired server and start the service if not in the Topology view drop down list on the page.  If it doesn't exist.  See reason number one above.

This isn't necessarily an issue or a bug but it can be annoying and I have seen it happen more than twice so I thought I would at least attempt to explain why.

Please leave comments below if you have any additional insight or questions.