Foundation Search hopelessly broken

Question

Is there some way for me to simply "re-initialize" SharePoint Foundation Search in 2010?

Simply clicking on the SharePoint Foundation Search in Central Admin -> Services on Server yields: Object reference not set to an instance of an object... I can't do anything with it via Central admin, attempts to start it or modify its settings give me that error. Nothing in the ULS log, nothing in the event log.

I can execute Get-SPSearchService / Get-SPSearchServiceInstance and see some results. Is there some way to just wipe it and start over -- without affecting the web application I've built?

I was simply trying to get the search functionality working and I have somehow made things worse in that now Central Admin will have nothing to do with the SharePoint Foundation Search service...

EDIT -

I rebooted and now get a slightly better error message:

Some or all identity references could not be translated.

I am trying to update the managed account and the crawl account but am unable to do so via Central Admin -- I've tried the following to no avail:

set-spsearchservice -identity eb2babc1-2828-4153-b39f-49738809a526 -crawlaccount domain\sp_crawl -crawlpassword (convertto-securestring "12345" -AsPlainText -force)

Powershell just stares blankly at me I'm not sure anything was accomplished.

Answer 1

For anyone who may come across a problem like this,

It appears the problem may have been caused by using a domain\username that exceeded 20 characters.

I was able to repair the situation by creating new users with shorter usernames and updating the settings outside of central admin (via powershell commands)

stsadm -o spsearch -farmserviceaccount <domain>\<serviceaccountname> -farmservicepassword <password>

(ok, maybe you can run stsadm outside powershell but that is where I ran it) and:

set-spsearchservice -identity <service ID gleaned from get-spsearchservice> -crawlaccount <domain>\<crawl account name> -crawlpassword (convertto-securestring "<password>" -AsPlainText -force)

I hope this can help someone out.