SharePoint 2010 Search Service Stuck in Started Mode

Today I was working on a client’s SharePoint Server 2010 application server. I needed to remove the Search service application. I deleted the service application and then stopped the SharePoint Foundation Search in Services on Server but when I tried to stop the SharePoint Server Search it would force me to go to the service application page and unprovision the Search service but there was no Search service application to unprovision. I tried just about every PowerShell script and all kinds of tricks that I was able to find on the Internet but nothing worked. I even disabled and stopped the service in the Services Console on Windows Server 2008 R2 but that didn’t make a difference. The Services on Server page continued to display the SharePoint Server Search as Started. Yes, I did reboot the server and it didn’t help. Finally I ran the following command which took care of the problem. You need to run STSADM at the command prompt from the BIN folder in the 14 hive (C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\BIN), unless you have already added that to your system path.

stsadm -o osearch -action stop