After installing a fresh SharePoint 2010 standard farm I kept on receiving this error when I try to search something in the search center:
CoreResultsWebPart::OnInit: Exception initializing: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.WebControls.CoreResultsWebPart.SetPropertiesOnQueryReader() at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.WebControls.CoreResultsWebPart.OnInit(EventArgs e)
After trying the following actions:
- ensuring that hotfix 976462 is installed
- ensuring that the “SharePoint Server Search” and “Search Query and Site Settings Service” services are running, both are up and running
- removing and reinstalling the search application
- ensuring that the application pool is assigned correctly
- restarting the timer service
- restarting the search service
- rebooting
Still no luck, than I figured that the Search webpart wasn’t activated. So activating the site collection Search Webpart solved this issue.
Also try clicking through search administration pages in Central Admin. It solved the issue for us when other options were eliminated (except rebooting).