Search service was unable to connect to the Search service

 

Symptoms :

 

1. You find the following error when you try to search for a key word

2. You might also get an exception

Exception from
HRESULT: 0xC0041228"

3. This could be accompanied with an event ID "10032" which states that "database connection string is not available"

Steps needed to be taken ( in same order )  :

 

1. Try toggling the Office SharePoint server search - restart it . Make sure you have atleast one server which is serving the queries

2. Do the same for Windows SharePoint server search

3. Ensure that the DCA account has permissions on the web application

4. Go to the SSP and click on edit properties, and ensure that the Index server is selected, if not choose it from the drop down

5. Go to Manage Content databases --> Select the database and ensure that the search server is selected, if not choose it from the drop down

 

That should fix it