[Galaxy Note 3 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] PeterGuru:
As some of you may remember, my first Note 3, which I got a week ago yesterday, was returned for a full refund the next day due to a Nandroid restore failure through TWRP.

However, some of you may also remember that I had an extremely annoying error message pop up continually for the entire 24 hours I had the device.

The error: Unfortunately IndexService has stopped

This error revealed itself every 1-2 minutes. I could not figure out why as there was little information anywhere on the Internet.

However, after picking up a new Note 3 yesterday, and after many hours of trial-and-error file transfers, I think I found the reason ... a corrupt or otherwise damaged/flawed PDF file.

All other files, Word, Excel, Images, Videos, etc., were NOT the cause, and it had nothing to do with the SDCard. It doesn’t matter if you use a 64MB, 32MB, Class 6, Class 10, or UHS-1 type card. The card is not the problem. I know this because, this time, with my new Note 3, I never put in an SDCard. I transferred all files directly to internal storage and, unfortunately, the IndexService error still appeared … every 1-2 minutes.

This time, however, I noticed that the error message appeared only AFTER I transferred all my files to the device, so I knew it had to do with these files, and that’s where I focused my attention.

It took about 9 hours last night and early this morning. I began by deleting all personal files from the device. Result: No error messages. Then, directory-by-directory (I have 12,554 files and 371 directories), I transferred them back to the device, each time waiting about 3-4 minutes to see if the error message would appear. I read in other forums that the problem might be related to PDF files, so I first transferred all other file types. Result: No error messages. Then I begin transferring PDF files. I did so in groups of about 50 at a time. Yes, I have many PDF files; about 2,100 of them. It all came down to two PDF files. Wow, 2 out of 2,100! I can’t explain why, but when I transferred those two files to the device, the error message appeared, and when I deleted them, the error message disappeared.

Fortunately, the two files were not important, so I permanently deleted them; however, before doing so, I thought that they might have originally been written using a very old version of Adobe, and that they simply couldn’t be “read” by the Adobe reader on the Note 3. With this in mind, I opened them in the latest version of Adobe on my PC, and then re-saved them with a new file name; however, the result was the same. They still caused the indexing error. So, at this point I have no idea why they are causing the problem.

Finally, after all my files were transferred to internal storage, without the 2 problem files, I waited 1 hour. No error message. I then put in my Sandisk 32GB UHS-1 card, copied all the files over, and then waited another 30 minutes. No error message. This morning I deleted all the files from internal storage so that I only had them on the SDCard. No error message. It has now been over 24 hours, and still no error message.

SUMMARY:

1)	The indexing error is NOT caused by the external SDCard.

2)	The indexing error is PROBABLY caused by a problem PDF file(s)

3)	The size of the PDF file is irrelevant. My problem files were each about 10MB; however, all smaller sizes, and even the remaining larger-sized PDF files do not cause a problem.

4)	Others have suggested that I turn OFF a particular service, but it didn’t work for me.

5)	Others have suggested that the error relates to files larger than 200MB. This does NOT appear to be the case in my situation. I have many files that are more than 200MB, and there isn’t a problem.

6)	Another xda member said to create a file called .nomedia and place it in the root of the directory where the problem files are located. I tried this, but I still get the error message.

I hope this helps others.

Peter