For a demo I am doing I have built a set of software that possibly
should not all be running on the same machine, e.g. SPS v3 and
Exchange and SPS is installed using MSDE not SQL.

All seems OK except that searching does not work - it does not
report an error just does not find anything!

Going to the search admin shows an error like "Cannot connect to
indexing server". I have double checked the user account used for
crawling and given it admin provileges in case it was an
authenticaon problem.

The indexing service is working. I know I'll get my knuckles
wrapped as all the advice is not to do this sort of thing but I'm
sure I cannot be the first to try. The machine is set up as a domain
controller.