I was able to solve both of these problems myself. I found the config.xml file under ...\webapps\geoportal\viewer\geoportal\widgets that controls what widgets are displayed by ESRI's Flex Viewer, and then under the FindData directory under \widgets the FindDataWidget.xml file for additional configuration of that widget. There's an attribute of the widget labeled "Geospatial Search" in the config.xml file called preload which was set to "open" but can be set to "minimized". When I made some changes in these files the 2032 Error went away.