I think you could be correct when you say that there's a corrupted file that causes it to hang. A crude way of trying to identify the file is to go the files tab and turn off half the files types from being indexed. Let it run. Either it completes or it stops. If it stops, turn off half again. If it completes, you know the bad file type is in the other half. Doing this should allow you to identify the bad file type.

Also, look through the file list that's indexed. File types have different search providers, like HTML, plain text and so on. Are there any that look out of place, that might have been installed by some third party application?

Another idea is let the search hang on the 4,317th file. Then run a command prompt. Type

CD c:\
DIR /s /TA /O-D >c:\newt.txt

This will create a file named newt.txt that will hold all of the files and the last time they were accessed. Accessed, meaning read, not modified. You'll have to search through the file with a file editor but look for the last several files that were modified. If we're in luck, your bad file will be in there. Good luck!

I looked in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Search\CrawlScopeManager\Windows\SystemIndex\DefaultRules key and found something interesting.

DefaultRules\1 contains:

Default   REG_DWORD    0x00000001
Include   REG_DWORD    0x00000000
Policy    REG_DWORD    0x00000000
Suppress  REG_DWORD    0x00000000
URL       REG_SZ       file:///C:\Users\*\AppData\Local\Temp\*

Look at that URL key - two wildcards!

So since Windows Search natively supports wildcards, all we have to do is tweak an existing exception.

Adding wildcard exceptions to Windows Search

1. Add template exception.
   Add an exception for a suitable directory by going to Indexing Options → Modify and deselecting one directory (in my case, C:\Users\MyName\dev\trunk\bin).
2. Stop the Windows Search service.
   Go to Services, select Windows Search, right-click on it, and select Stop.
3. Find the existing exception.
   Open Registry Editor and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Search\CrawlScopeManager\Windows\SystemIndex\WorkingSetRules.
   Look through each numbered subkey to find yours.

4. Tweak the exception.
   In my case, I have multiple branches checked out, so I will have directories for trunk and for each versioned branch (such as 3.2, 4.0, etc). So I changed the URL key from

   file:///C:\Users\MyName\dev\ProjectName\trunk\bin
   

   to

   file:///C:\Users\MyName\dev\ProjectName\*\bin
   

5. Restart the Windows Search service.
   Right-click on Windows Search and select Start or Restart.

That's it! The directories are even unchecked/excluded in the Indexing Options.