Hi,
The only thing I can think of that might be causing a null reference exception when you click that button is the index builder providers which are used to populate the search index.
First thing I would try is do a search, this will initialize the search index if it isn't already created.
Next I would look and make sure the config files are present and not empty (ie they should be about 1kb each). They should be in the Web/Setup/indexbuilderconfig folder.
Hope it helps,
Joe