Highlight Gained’t Re-enable After Disabling by way of Terminal on macOS Sequoia

I’m utilizing a Mac Studio (32GB RAM) working macOS Sequoia, and I’ve run right into a Highlight difficulty that I can’t resolve.

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🧩 How the issue began:

I observed that mds (Highlight indexing course of) was consuming a variety of reminiscence, so I requested ChatGPT easy methods to briefly disable Highlight. It advised I run some Terminal instructions and delete a Highlight-related file (sadly I don’t keep in mind the precise file — presumably .Highlight-V100).

Now, Highlight is totally disabled, and I can’t flip it again on, it doesn’t matter what I attempt.

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🧪 What I’ve tried to this point:

🔓 Pre-steps:

• Disabled System Integrity Safety (SIP) by way of csrutil disable
• Disabled authenticated-root by way of csrutil authenticated-root disable
• Granted Full Disk Entry to Terminal

⚙️ Instructions tried:

sudo mdutil -i on /
    Indexing and looking disabled.

sudo mdutil -i on /System/Volumes/Information
    Indexing and looking disabled.

sudo mdutil -E /
    Indexing and looking disabled.

mdutil -a -s
/:
    Indexing and looking disabled.
/System/Volumes/Information:
    Indexing and looking disabled.
/System/Volumes/Preboot:
    Indexing enabled.

sudo mdutil -i on ~
    Error: invalid operation.
    Error: unknown indexing state.

mdutil -s ~
    Error: unknown indexing state.

sudo rm -rf /.Highlight-V100
sudo rm -rf /System/Volumes/Information/.Highlight-V100

Second one fails: “Operation not permitted”

Restarting the metadata server:

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist
sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist
    Error: Enter/output error

sudo launchctl bootstrap system /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist
    Bootstrap failed: 5: Enter/output error

❗️ Present state:

• Highlight nonetheless doesn’t work.
• Terminal at all times says “Indexing and looking disabled”.
• mds doesn’t seem in Exercise Monitor anymore.
• The system behaves usually in any other case, however I can not seek for apps, recordsdata, or something by way of Highlight.

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❓ What I need assistance with:

• How can I absolutely restore Highlight performance?
• Is there a approach to recreate the deleted metadata/index recordsdata?
• Would reinstalling macOS over the present system (with out wiping information) repair this?
• Another repair or workaround can be appreciated.