I was tweaking toolbars and lost Search button and field, they looked they belonged to a separate toolbar but I can't find it anymore.

Where is it hiding?

They are part of the search toolbar, is that still enabled ?

Search is now available only in View - Torrents/Plugins/Scripts/Search where I can select what is shown in the main window, and only after fresh ktorrent start, if I move any buttons around using Configure Toolbars these views disappear and I am only left with Group View Visible and no access to Search (or scripts and plugins) whatsoever.

After ktorrent restart toolbars behave as follows:

If I choose Search from View menu I can see my Main and Shutdown toolbars but not Torrents toolbar, and if I choose View - Torrents then Main and Shutdown stay but Search is replaced by Torrents toolbar buttons - ie I can only have one or the other but not both, as was set on default interface. The Torrents entry in Menubar is only available in torrents view mode, not in Search or Plugins, but that's natural.

In that menubar there is no Search toolbar in Settings - Toolbars Shown, I have Main, Shutdown and Torrents there regardless what View I am in.

If I tweak toolbars while in View-Search mode then Search toolbar entry appears in dropdown menu of Configure Toolbats window as <searchplugin> but Torrent Toolbar is not there for editing anymore, and I lose access to my torrents view until I restart ktorrent again.

Which version are you running ?

4.1.0, on OpenSuse 11.4.

Reinstalling from the scratch helps but it's the second time I run into this problem.