Spotlight slowing MB Air

[rsterner]

I imaged our student loan MacBook Airs with 10.9.1 and use Deep Freeze on them. Each time a user logs on, Spotlight starts indexing and slows the Mac to a crawl and drains precious battery power.

Is there a proper way to disable Spotlight so it doesn't run for each new user; and without causing other problems?

[jacob_salmela]

Disable

launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

Re-enable

launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

There is also an older method, which can sometimes cause problems:

mdutil -a -i off