I also saw this same error  after installing my second TR (the first didn’t do that). I was unable to get the search  working so I created a new web application & new SSP and made the new SSP the default for my primary web site. The search worked after this.

I installed  the Beta 2 TR on a new test  environment we just set  up
using the slip stream approach. Everything appeared to have installed
correctly but when it comes time  to turn  on search it errored out
with the only error message  being SPSearch when trying to turn on WSS
search and OSearch when turning  on Office sharepoint  Server search.
When I checked  the services  both were not running  so I started  the
services and got an error that says Office SharePoint Server Search on
local computer  Error 6: The handle  is invalid. When I looked at both
accounts they were running off of an NT Authority\Local service  
account if you change  the log  on as local  system account  or change
that NT Authority account to a local admin  on the box  you can start  
the service . After that if you try to start the search service
through the UI you get the message AN Unhandled exception  occurred in
the user  interface.exception Information: OSearch. Any idea  on what I
need to do in order  to make search work?

I thought in order  to create a SSP you needed to be able to set  an indexer, and the only way to setup an indexer was to turn  on the search  service through assign services  to servers? Am I mistaken about this?

Since Search is major component of an SSP, some member of the farm has to be an index server  so you can configure the indexer when you create an SSP. If you are building a farm, these services  need to be a domain account.