I went to TechNet forums with this error:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepointadmin/thread/cde1b74c-f19d-4b06-9754-d64f20858bfa

Application Server Administration job failed for service instance Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchServiceInstance (ea1f2cb4-6fe0-4838-92d7-1e1a908808fd).

Reason: Object 196c41c4-d474-42a2-8bac-f5239cefff2c not found.

It an application error that pops up every minute.

I can't find the object in the registry which might be why it can't be found by the applicaiton.

So I went to Services on Server.  I clicked on the Office Server Search Service.

I entered the password of the service account that the service uses and clicked OK.

When I did, I got a entry in the Application Log that said a new application had been found identifying the same GUID as the one not found above.

Then it also appeared in the registry under HKLM..Office Server Search\Applications.

I reset IIS and now search is working and the error has quit... for now.

What I don't know is what triggered it in the first place.  Search had been working and then it quit and that's when the errors started.

-robot