In the SharePoint world, Many a times after installing everything including search server express, when you tried to crawl the contents, it may give some nonsense error and you may not be able to understand what it is. The solution i have come across is , during the installations of required software you have to take care . The search server express might not be having certain files which is required for search to work properly. For that you need to install service pack . Here are the procedure to set up the environment for SharePoint : Download Microsoft SharePoint Foundation from the below link: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=5970 2. Download Search Server express from the below link: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=18914 ...