Indexer keeps crashing on Vista - Event 7031 on SearchIndexer.exe

The indexer on Vista is repeatedly crashing - in fact, it won't start up at all. As a first shot, I've logged all the information I can find in the hope it gets indexed. So far, the only report I can find of similar problems is in Chinese and from a beta build of Vista. More later

"Microsoft Windows Search Indexer has stopped working"
Event ID: 7031
OS: Vista Ultimate
Frequency: Repeatedly

"There is no content available for Event 7034, for this version of the Windows operating system"

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: SearchIndexer.exe
Application Version: 6.0.6000.16386
Application Timestamp: 4549b667
Fault Module Name: mssrch.dll
Fault Module Version: 6.0.6000.16386
Fault Module Timestamp: 4549bd4b
Exception Code: c00000fd
Exception Offset: 00007c40
OS Version: 6.0.6000.2.0.0.256.1
Locale ID: 2057
Additional Information 1: f790
Additional Information 2: 174183f92d554d49550d71425f227859
Additional Information 3: 5f5b
Additional Information 4: bacee04fbe2fc1532fd17e15138538e7