Louis-Charles Gagnon

Sometimes the search services gets stuck, following an index reset or a problem with the search component.
When Search service application shows crawl status as “Paused by system” or “External Request”, it can be fixed below:

Display search component status:
$ssa = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication
get-spenterprisesearchstatus -SearchApplication $ssa -Detailed -Text

Resume search component:

(Optional) If not running SharePoint Management:

Add-PSSnappin "Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell"

Then:

$ssa = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication
Resume-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication $ssa

Force a index reset (if stuck):

Make sure to reset the Search Host Controller service and timer service before running theses commands.

(Optional) If not running SharePoint Management:

Add-PSSnappin "Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell"

Then:

$ssa = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication
$disableAlerts = $true
$ignoreUnreachableServer = $true
$ssa.reset($disableAlerts, $ignoreUnreachableServer)

var web = clientContext.Web;

var file = web.GetFileByServerRelativeUrl(web.ServerRelativeUrl + "/SitePages/Home.aspx");

var wpm = file.GetLimitedWebPartManager(PersonalizationScope.Shared);

web.Context.Load(wpm.WebParts, wps => wps.Include(wp => wp.WebPart.Title));

web.Context.ExecuteQueryRetry();

for(var i=0;i<wpm.WebParts.Count;i++)

{

    if (wpm.WebParts[i].WebPart.Title.Equals("Get started with your site"))

    {

        wpm.WebParts[i].DeleteWebPart();

        web.Context.ExecuteQueryRetry();

    }

}