I just created a full text catalog :

Enable full text (right click on db => file => enable ful text indexing)
Create catalog (Storage => Fulle text Catalog => New Catalog => "FTCatalog" => OK)
Add column to catalog (right click on catalog => properties => table/views add table/columns , automatic => ok)

The table has 270k lines, I created the catalog this morning and still it has 0 Item Count and the populate status is 1.
The logs in [...]\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\LOG\SQLFT0000800007.LOG doesn't show anything more than (i tried to recreate it 10 min ago)

2014-06-30 16:32:03.93 spid23s     Informational: Full-text Full
population initialized for table or indexed view '[XXX].[dbo].[XXX]'
(table or indexed view ID '1771153355', database ID '8'). Population
sub-tasks: 4.

All SPs are installed.
I tried with some smaller table, it's the same.
The service "SQL Server FullText Search" is running.
Nothing on the EventViewer.
Any idea ?
UPDATE
In Sql Server Log I have these two thing :

Changing the status to PAUSE for full-text catalog "XXX" (7) in database "XXX" (8). This is an informational message only. No user action is required.
Changing the status to PAUSE for full-text catalog "XXX" (7) in database "XXX" (8). This is an informational message only. No user action is required.


If you SELECT COUNT(*) FROM TABLE that only returns one row (the count), is relatively light, and is the way to get that datum.

And SELECT * is not a physical no-no, in that it is legal and allowed.

However, the problem with SELECT * is that you can cause a lot more data movement.  You operate on every column in the table.  If your SELECT only includes a few columns, you might be able to get your answer from an index or indexes, which reduces the I/O and also the impact on the server cache.

So, Yes it is recommended against as a general practice because it is wasteful of your resources.

The only real benefit of SELECT * is not typing all the column names.  But from SSMS you can use drag and drop to get the column names in your query and delete those that you do not need.

An analogy: If someone uses SELECT * when they do not need every column, would they also use SELECT without a WHERE (or some other limiting clause) when they do not need every row?  
