Sharepoint SSL returns Zero Results

My Users report getting zero results for search queries in one of our sharepoint sites. Even though we know that the item exists in the database! What changed? This was working without a hitch previously.

Ah I remembered that this happened right after i had installed digital certificates and required HTTPS traffic. Could the https:// protocol have affected the search results?

A look at the application log shows:

The start address

A look at the Central Admin using Sharepoint central admin/operations/services on server/windows sharpoint service search, I found the entries as follows:

Server: np:\\.\pipe\MSSQL$Microsoft##SSEE\sql\query
Database:WSS_Search_demosvr
User Account: network Service

However, the SSEE server was NOT installed. This must have been an old entry. So I recreated the search database and called it WSS_Content_Search DB with collation of Latin1_general_c1_AS_KS_WS.

Once the WSS_Content_Search DB was fully re-populated, I still could not get any results from enterprise search in Sharpoint.

So I also did “alternate access maps” to include https://
(see http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2007/03/06/what-every-sharepoint-administrator-needs-to-know-about-alternate-access-mappings-part-1.aspx for a complete explanation)

From the server screen:
WSS Central Console –> Operations –> Alternate Address Mapping

Here are the settings:

http://demosvr Default http://demosvr
http://demo.futuregen.sg Default http://demo.futuregen.sg
http://demosvr:2283 Default http://demosvr:2283

I then changed it to this:

http://demosvr Default http://demosvr (for sharpoint-80)
https://demo.futuregen.sg Default https://demo.futuregen.sg (for demoimage)
http://demo.futuregen.sg Default https://demo.futuregen.sg (added as an internal url)
http://demosvr:2283 Default http://demosvr:2283