The search service application in our farm went bonkers complaining that it couldn't connect to itself. After multiple people fiddling to try and fix it we've ended up with two search application. The new one, which is working perfectly, and the original one which is very unhappy.
I've tried deleting the original Search App in Central Admin but it just won't go – it sits on the screen saying "Processing" but it never completes regardless of how long it is left. There's lot's happening in the logs but I can't really decipher exactly why this isn't working.
Things are working fine within the farm but I'd ideally like to clean up this old application if possible. Are there any other options like deleting it with stsadm? I've had a dig but can't seem to find the commands to enumerate the service applications and then delete the correct one.
Best Answer
Found it!
Thanks to this blog I was able to delete the application - rather than dive in to the DBs as that article said I simply picked up the GUID that was displayed in the IE status bar whilst trying to delete the application in Central Admin.