SharePoint 2010, Search result error: The search request was unable to connect to the Search Service

Make sure you have connected your service to the right web application. In our case we added a new Search Service Application to replace an old one, but did not connect it to the correct web application (we had several ones). All services (computer and SharePoint) was started and crawler work fine.

In Central Administration, click Manage Web Applications and highlight your web application. Click Service Connections icon in top menu - our list of connections looked like this where our new service was "Search Service Application Work" and was not connected to our web application:

Change "deafult" to "custom" and mark all the service applications. Hit OK. Switch to the search results page and refresh - everything should work fine.

SharePoint 2010 in virtual Windows 7 on a MacBook Pro

My MacBook Pro with OS X 10.7.2 has VMWare Fusion 4.1.1 with Windows 7 Pro SP1 x64... And I wanted to include my favorite program SharePoint 2010 also. So I installed SharePoint 2010 Std server on my Windows 7 as described here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee554869%28office.14%29.aspx

I gave my virtual Windows 7 4 GB RAM and it works great. If I want to stop the SQL and SharePoint to release resources I run the following scripts in batch files (.bat):

Stop SharePoint server:

@echo off
@echo Stopping SharePoint 2010 services...
iisreset /stop /noforce
net stop "SharePoint 2010 User Code Host"
net stop "SharePoint 2010 Timer"
net stop "SharePoint 2010 Administration"
net stop "SharePoint Server Search 14"
net stop "SharePoint Foundation Search V4"
net stop "SharePoint 2010 Tracing"
@pause

Stop SQL server:

@echo off
@echo Stopping SQL Express instance...
net stop MSSQL$EXPRESS
@echo Stopping SQL SharePoint instance...
net stop MSSQL$SHAREPOINT
@pause

And the scripts to start them up again:

Start SQL server:

@echo off
@echo Starting SQL Express instance...
net start MSSQL$EXPRESS
@echo Starting SQL SharePoint instance...
net start MSSQL$SHAREPOINT
@pause

Start SharePoint server:

@echo off
@echo Starting SharePoint 2010 services...
iisreset /start /noforce
net start "SharePoint 2010 User Code Host"
net start "SharePoint 2010 Timer"
net start "SharePoint 2010 Administration"
net start "SharePoint Server Search 14"
net start "SharePoint Foundation Search V4"
net start "SharePoint 2010 Tracing"
@pause