it says that the administrator has disabled the search function. Is the search function not working or is it just my system?

AFAIK, it's been temporarily disabled to ease the growing strain on the forums. From what I've heard, the search feature, sigs, and avatars will all be re-instated soon, but don't take that as gospel - I'm just another member like you :D

Yes, the search function has been temporarily disabled along with other things like avatars and signatures to ease the server load.

It is not just you.

We apologize for having to do this, but know realistically that this is a much better solution than turning every thing on and having the forums crash repeatedly every couple minutes.

Rest assured we are working towards a solution that should mean the return of all of our forum goodies. All in good time.

We appreciate your patience.