I've been pounding my head against that Sharepoint/WSS search problem below for a couple of days now, not exclusively, but this was a real tough nut to crack.... I've finally traced it down to a problem with SQL's full text search. I was getting a problem dll error message. Ok, so I reapplied SP3a hoping that might clear up the dll issue. It replaced it with:
MSG 7635 Level 16 State 1 Procedure sp_fulltext_database line 46
The Microsoft Search Service cannot be administered under the present
user account
Ok, more google searching and finally I see the light and find this:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=MPG.14cd6d851f79df7598987f%40msnews.microsoft.com
Tried the specified steps and behold my search is functional.... Whew!
-a