"npm search term" results in FATAL ERROR

[scottrudy]

I'm opening this issue because:

• npm is crashing.
• npm is producing an incorrect install.
• npm is doing something I don't understand.
• Other (see below for feature requests):

What's going wrong?

Search seemed to work, until yesterday when I updated to npm 4.0.1, but I have since downgraded
When I search for a package, I

• Get an error: "Cannot read property '_updated' of undefined"
• NPM tries to rebuild the search index
• NPM crashes with: "FATAL ERROR: CALL_AND_RETRY_LAST Allocation failed - JavaScript heap out of memory"

I have tried

• npm clear cache
• Uninstalling npm and node, along with deleting all /user files
  • verified c:\program files\nodejs
  • manually deleted c:\users\scrudy\appdata\roaming\npm
  • manually deleted c:\users\scrudy\appdata\npm-cache
  • manually deleted .npmrc and .node_repl_history from c:\users\scrudy
• overwriting to a previous version of npm back to 3.9
  • npm i npm@3.9 -g
• several reboots

How can the CLI team reproduce the problem?

Type npm search _someterm_
https://gist.github.com/scottrudy/a658ce88b66f035ff9cbce7831f8ebde

supporting information:

• npm -v prints: 3.10.9
• node -v prints: v6.9.1
• npm config get registry prints: https://registry.npmjs.org/
• Windows, OS X/macOS, or Linux?: Windows 10
• Network issues: N/A
  • Geographic location where npm was run: Baltimore, MD
• Container: N/A

[legodude17]

Try updating npm to 4.0.1.

[scottrudy]

> npm -i npm@4.0.1 -g
> npm cache clear

Fixed