it's a simple scenario that i recently faced in my organization like got one strange error in search administration page "The search application for SSP on the server <SERVER NAME> is not provisioned".
so we just found a way to resolve this issue by clearing some file and changing the config value's
Step 1: Disable the Application Server administration service timer job by using central administration -> Monitoring -> Timer Job definitions->Application server administration service ->Disable
Step 2: Open the windows service administration (Services.msc) and stop the windows SharePoint timer services
Step 3: Go to C:\Documents and settings\all users\application data\microsoft\sharepoint\config\GUID, here you can find the config file and number of XML files.
Step 4: Delete all xml file's and open the config and change the value as 1
step 5:Then start the windows SharePoint timer service (services.msc) and wait for few minutes to generate the new xml files and open the config file and confirm the count is greater than 1 eg: 415543
Step 6: then enable the SharePoint timer services using central administration
Step 7: check the Search service administration page there you can find everything back to normal.