>When my system administrator instructed SWISHE v.1.x to index only a
>hundred files or so in the problem directory....the search funcion worked
>okay.


First thing I'd suggest is updating to swish-e 2.x.  When we first were
using Swish-e, it was on Linux and had problems with more than 20,000 files
with our configuration.  It took about 15 hours to index.  When we went to
swish-e 2.x on the same server, it dropped to minutes, and when we went to
Solaris, the time dropped even further.

What platform are you using?

Dave