Windows Desktop Search

Article
10/13/2008

One of the points of feedback has been about disabling services and optionally installing components—we’ve talked about our goals in this area in previous posts. A key driver around wanting this type of control (but not the only driver) is a perception around performance and resource consumption of various platform components. A goal of Windows is to provide a reliable and consistent platform for developers—one where they can count on system services as being available, as well as a set of OS features that all customers have the potential to benefit from. At the same time we must do so in a way that is efficient in system resource usage—efficient enough so the benefit outweighs the cost. We recognize that some percentage of customers believe solving this equation can only be done manually—much like some believe that the best car performance can only come from manual transmission. For this post we’re going to look into the desktop search functionality from the perspective of the work we’re doing as both a broadly available platform component and to provide the rich end-user functionality, and also look at the engineering tradeoffs involved and techniques we use to build a great solution for everyone. Chris McConnell, a principal SDE on the Find and Organize team, contributed this post. --Steven

Are you one of those folks who believes that search indexing is the cause of your drive light flashing like mad? Do you believe this is the reason you’re getting skooled when playing first person shooters with friends? If so, this blog post is for you! The Find and Organize team owns the ‘Windows Search’ service, which we simply refer to as the ‘indexer’. A refrain that we hear from some Vista power-users is they want to disable the indexer because they believe it is eating up precious system resources on their PC, offering little in return. Per our telemetry data, at most about 1.5% of Vista users disable the indexing service, and we believe that this perception is one motivator for doing so.

The goal of this blog post is to clarify the role of the indexer and highlight some of the work that has been done to make sure the indexer uses system resources responsibly. Let’s start by talking about the function of the indexing service – what is it for? why should you leave it running?

Why Index?

Today’s PCs are filled with many rich types of files, such as documents, photos, music, videos, and so on. The number of files people have on their PC is growing at a rapid pace, making it harder and harder for them to find what they’re looking for, no matter how organized their files may (or may not) be. Increasingly, these files contain a good deal of structure, with metadata properties which describe their contents. A typical music file contains properties which describe the artist, album name, year of release, genre, duration of the song, and others which can be very useful when searching for music.

Although search indexing technologies date back to the early days of Windows, With Windows Vista Microsoft introduced a consumer operating system that brought this functionality to mainstream users more prominently. Prior to Vista, searching was pretty rudimentary – often a brute force crawl through the files on your machine, looking only at simple file properties such as file name, date modified, and size, or an application specific index of application specific data. Within Windows, a more comprehensive search option allowed you to also examine the contents of the files, but this wasn’t widely used. It was fairly basic functionality – it treated all files just the same, without the tapping in to the rich metadata properties available in the files.

In Windows Vista, the indexing service is on by default and includes expanded support in terms of the number of file formats and properties which are indexed. The indexer watches specific folders on your PC and catalogues their contents to facilitate fast searching of those files. When Windows indexes your music files, it also knows how to extract the music-specific properties which you’re most likely to search for. This enables support for more powerful searches and richer views over your files which wasn’t possible before. But this indexing doesn’t come free, and this is where engineering gets interesting. There’s a non-zero cost (in terms of system resources) that has to be paid to enable this functionality, and there are trade-offs involved in when and how you pay that price. There is nothing unique to indexing—all features have this cost-benefit tradeoff.

Trade-Offs

Many search solutions follow(ed) the traditional “grep” model which means every search will read all of the files you wanted to search. In this case, you paid with your time as you waited for the search to execute. The more files you searched, the longer you waited each time you searched. If you wanted to perform the same search again, you would “pay” again. And the value you were getting in return wasn’t very good since the search functionality wasn’t particularly powerful. With Windows Vista , the indexer tries to read all of your files before you search so that when you search, it’s generally quicker and more responsive. This requires the indexer to scan all of your files just once initially, and not each and every time you perform a search. If the file were to change, the indexer would receive a notification (a “push” event) so that it could read that file again. When the indexer reads a file, it extracts the pertinent information about the file to enable more powerful searches and views. The challenge is to do this quickly enough so that the index is always up to date and ready for you to search, but also doing so in such a way that it doesn’t impact the performance of your system in a negative way. This is always a balancing act requiring trade-offs, and there are a number of things the indexer does to maintain its standing as a good Windows citizen while working to make sure that the index is always up-to-date.

A Model Citizen

A lot of work has gone into making the indexer be a model Windows citizen. We’ve written an extensive whitepaper on the issue, but it’s worth covering some of the highlights here. First and foremost, the indexer only monitors certain folders, which limits the amount of work it needs to do to just those files that you’re most likely to search. The indexer also “backs off” when you are actively using your PC. It indexes files more slowly, or stops entirely depending on the level of activity on the PC. When the indexer is reading files it uses low priority I/O and CPU and immediately releases the file if another application needs access.

It’s critical that we get all of these issues right for the indexer, because it’s not only important for the features that our team builds (like Windows Search), but it’s important to the Windows platform as a whole. There are a host of applications which require the ability to search file contents on the PC. Imagine if each one of those applications built their own version of the indexer! Even if all of these applications did a great job, there will be a lot of unnecessary and redundant activity happening on your PC. Every time you saved one of your documents there will be a flurry of activity as these different indexers rushed to read the new version. To combat that, the indexer is designed to do this work for any application which might choose to use it and provide an open platform and API with flexibility and extensibility for developers. The API designed to be flexible enough to meet needs across the Windows ecosystem. Out of the box, the indexer has knowledge of about 200 common file types, cataloging nearly 400 different properties by default. And there is support for applications to add new file types and properties at any time. Applications can also add support for indexing of data types that aren’t file-based at all, like your e-mail. Just a few of the applications that are leveraging the indexer today are Microsoft Office Outlook and OneNote, Lotus Notes, Windows Live Photo Gallery, Internet Explorer 8, and Google Desktop Search. As with all extensible systems, developers often find creative uses for components for the system services. One example of this is the way the Tablet PC components leverage the index contents to improve handwriting accuracy.

Constantly Improving

We’re constantly working to improve the indexer’s performance and reliability. Version 3 shipped in Windows Vista. Major improvements in this version included:

The indexer runs as a system service vs. as a per user process. This minimizes impact on multi-user scenarios e.g. only one catalog per system results in reduction in catalog size and prevents re-indexing of the same content over and over. Additional benefit is gained from the robust nature of services.
The indexer employs low priority I/O to minimize impact of indexing on responsiveness of PC. Before Windows Vista, all I/O was treated equally.

We’ve already released Windows Search version 4 as an enhancement to either Windows XP or Vista which goes even further in terms of performance and stability improvements, such as:

Significant improvements across the board for queries which involve sorting, filtering or grouping. Example improvements on Vista include:
1. Getting all results while sorting or grouping has been improved. Typical query improvements are up to 38% faster.
2. CPU time has been reduced by 80%
3. Memory usage has been reduced by 20%
Load on Exchange servers is reduced over 95% when Outlook is running in online mode. With previous versions of Windows Search, large numbers of Outlook clients running in online mode could easily overwhelm the Exchange server.
Reliability improvements including:
1. We made a number of fixes to address user-reported situations that previously caused indexing to stop working.
2. We improved the indexer’s ability to both prevent and recover from index corruptions. Now, when catalog corruption is detected it is always rebuilt automatically – previously this only happened in certain cases.
3. We added new logging and events to help track down and fix reliability issues.

And we’ve done even more to improve performance and reliability for the indexer in Windows 7 which you’ll soon see at the PDC. If you still believe that the indexer is giving you trouble, we’ve got a few things for you to try:

Download and install Windows Search 4 (on Vista or XP).
Download and install the Indexer Gadget from the Windows Live Gadget Gallery (Vista only). This gadget was written by one of our team members, and gives you a quick way to view the number of items indexed. It also allows you to pause indexing, or to make it run full-speed (without backing off).
If you‘re one of those people who like to get under the hood of the car and poke around the engine, you can use the Windows Task manager and/or Resource Monitor to monitor the following processes: SearchIndexer, SearchFilterHost, SearchProtocolHost.

If you feel as though your system is slow, and you suspect the indexer is the culprit, watch the gadget as you work with your PC. Is the number of indexed items changing significantly when you’re experiencing problems? If you pause the indexer, does your system recover? We’re always looking to make our search experience better, so if you are still running into issues, we want to hear about them. Send your feedback to idx-help@microsoft.com.

Chris McConnell

Find and Organize

Comments

Anonymous
October 13, 2008
Isn't Windows Search 4 part of Windows Update? If not why not? Especially when WS3 part of Vista
Anonymous
October 13, 2008
I love Windows Search 4 on Vista! Research of any document is always accurate.
Anonymous
October 13, 2008
I love Windows Search in Vista at home. Is there anyway I can replace XP's default search with Windows Search 4? I use XP at work, and searching for files in painfully slow. I can't stand the searchbox in the taskbar and would like to have it appear more integrated with XP.
Anonymous
October 13, 2008
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Anonymous
October 13, 2008
Don't bother making l33t g4m0rs happy. They often "know" inaccurate facts and will happily create useless registry keys because they think they'll make Windows go faster. They would turn off Search Indexer even if wouldn't have a measurable impact. Joe Average is slowly realizing that a blinking HDD LED doesn't mean a slow system - thanks to the I/O scheduler in Vista. And Windows Search 4 doesn't slow XP anymore like its predecessor. Even when indexing my +2GB PST-file... :) But Vista itself is not very I/O efficient. Instead of improving the indexer (which is good enough already) try to optimize 7 to need less and shorter I/O requests. Improve read-ahead (Anticipatory scheduling, anyone?). Reduce disk footprint of 7 by orders of magnitude. Resuming from hibernate can take ages on machines with lots of RAM.
Anonymous
October 13, 2008
Great blog explaining the pros and cons of the Windows Search.
Anonymous
October 13, 2008
Windows Search is nice and fast. What i missing is an advanced search UI. Where you can specify date, size, text in document, text in filename, extension, < > = relations, compare function etc. Id it is exist in vista than you need to make it more accessible. More responsive file system, ability to rename file while open aliases etc would be nice. But again. These are Vista features. What is new in Win 7. what will be the edge? Why should people switch to Win 7 from Vista or XP? With all these blog entries I can not see what will make the Win 7 a unique experience. What we are talking about here are design tweaks not fundamental changes.
Anonymous
October 13, 2008
I think the trouble with the perceived performance hit with the indexer isn't the indexer's fault at all. It's that while the indexer is well behaved, years and years of "background" scan services such as antivirus apps, or 3rd party search indexers have set a bad reputation towards anything that's perceived to do intensive work in the background. Vista's indexer is by far the most well behaved background scanner I've seen. Contrast that with, for example, Nero Scout, which I've had to disable on every single machine that came with Nero preinstalled, ever. Or any antivirus software in existence. In general, anything that tries to do anything else while I'm already doing something will be perceived as Bad (tm). Even in Vista. I remember, back before SP1 came out, one of my Vista machines would occasionally just sit there for hours, grinding away at the HD for no apparent reason. It wasn't using any CPU, and the culprit was some obscure service running from svchost, making it impossible to figure out from the task manager exactly what was it doing. It didn't cause any substantial slowdown, but just the fact it was doing something, and I couldn't even tell what it was, really ticked me off. And just because it was grinding away, everything "felt" slower because I'm mentally trained to associate "hard drive grinding noise" with "load/wait sequence". To this day, I still don't know what it was doing. I am curious as to how Windows determines it's a good time to scan. It wouldn't be just mouse and keyboard input... Maybe it would check if any DirectX apps are running? Background services? File IO? But then how would it detect other background scanners?
Anonymous
October 13, 2008
How does the indexer affect power usage on laptops? Even with power settings tuned for maximum power savings the same laptop with a fresh install of Windows Vista was getting 30-40% less time out of fully charged battery compared to Windows XP with the same set of programs. Another factor that contributes to the increased power usage in Vista is the graphics, but hard drive also drains considerable amount of power, especially in in seek mode. I am also curious to see statistics of how frequently people use search. Based on my experience, some people use it maybe once a month, and some don't even know that such functionality is available. Does it worth having the indexer working all the time? Does the speed of search out weight the increased power consumption over the lifetime of a computer? Would it make sense to enable the indexer only for specific programs, or when a specific type of search used for the first time?
Anonymous
October 13, 2008
PS. Many many thank's to Brandon P. for Gadget index ;)
Anonymous
October 13, 2008
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Anonymous
October 13, 2008
Windows Search is a good approach, very useful, but Finder has more good looking, maybe a mix, like Windows Search for fast search and some like finder for advanced search would be great...
Anonymous
October 13, 2008
No need to index Program Files, since it indexes the Start Menu folder. Put a link in there and you are good. Who would want it to come up with all the support files??
Anonymous
October 13, 2008
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Anonymous
October 13, 2008
Whenever i build a PC with Windows the two things i shutoff first is the Indexing service and system restore. Fact is i rarely if ever search for files on my home PC at work mostly i search for mail items and for that i don't mind the short wait. Be nice if windows had a feature like locate on Linux its fast and effective after the initial scan.
Anonymous
October 13, 2008
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Anonymous
October 13, 2008
Thanks for the explanation about how "Search" works. My biggest concern is not related to performance slowdown as much as GUI and results of searches: If I choose to search "Everywhere" and check the option to include "Non indexed, hidden etc. etc." the search never ends; what I mean is that I have the progress bar hanging almost at the end...forever ( I tested up to 24 hours). Others have already posted about the issue about Vista and laptop batteries so I will not go there; what I wish to see back in WIndows 7 is "Virtual Folders". They were a great concept and I would like to see them back the same way they were implemented. Virtual Folders alone would be enough for me to move to Windows 7 without delays. Thanks again Fritzly
Anonymous
October 13, 2008
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Anonymous
October 13, 2008
As a "l33t g4m3r" I find myself very pleased with Vista. I think you guys are doing a great job developing Windows 7.
Anonymous
October 13, 2008
ok Windows Search is Great but you Wont Eye candy ;) Feedback resolved :D
Anonymous
October 13, 2008
I've never had my system going slow due to search (to my knowledge). I very rarely use it for anything more than a filename search. Old habbits I guess.
Anonymous
October 13, 2008
However good windows search gets, and however well you manage to optimise it, the simple fact is that windows is doing it backwards. There should be no background indexing at all. No matter how much you minimise it, it's there. What should have happened is that a new file system should have been created where updating the index was part of the file create/modify API. That would mean you always had an up to date index, and the system would never need to be scanned. Of course, if Vista had a proper explorer, you wouldn't need to search in the first place....
Anonymous
October 13, 2008
@ lyesmith: Yes, Windows Search 4 is part of Windows Update. He put the download link for those with Windows Update disabled.
Anonymous
October 13, 2008
The biggest disappointment in Windows Vista for search has been its user interface. The Start menu search is nice, the indexed search integrated in Explorer also works well. What I don't like very much is the real-time non-indexed search which is slower than what used to be in XP, and the UI for non-indexed advanced search is very minimal and depends upon users to memorize the advanced search query syntax. Simple features like specifying where to search are too deep inside the UI, several others e.g. you cannot specify a date range from the UI, searching by file extension aren't exposed in the GUI. Users hate to remember the search syntax especially when it is so flexible and comprehensive. I just want a simple UI which exposes all the search features which isn't in Vista's search UI and this is what keeps me from using Advanced search and instead use third-party utilities, though the Start menu search and integrated search UI in Explorer is useful and awesome. XP also very conveniently allowed starting the Search Explorer pane by one click from the toolbar button which was unfortunately taken away in Windows Vista. Lesson to learn is make the search GUI very flexible, customizable, comprehensive and productive-not taking too many clicks and Browse boxes.
Anonymous
October 13, 2008
Since we are on the topic of search, what would be nice if if we can chose weather or not to have the search in the start menu or on the desktop it self, even on the taskbar would be nice..
Anonymous
October 13, 2008
One thing that I don't understand is that if I search for files in the start menu, it will show the most relevant match in the top, which is good; but if I press enter it pops up another window, which is not what I want: I want to it open the most relevant file. Just like it does when I search for programs.
Anonymous
October 13, 2008
nice... main task for operating system is running programs. we can read about everything on this blog, but not about the most important things. Steven, please speak about concretes... What will be changes in system to make this main function better (faster, more secure, etc.) ? Does your silence mean, that nothing ?
Anonymous
October 13, 2008
@marcinw PDC 13 day and Windows 7 disclouse :D http://microsoftpdc.com/
Anonymous
October 13, 2008
marcinw, you aren't the only windows user in the world, other users care about these things, they will probably address what you care about in a future post, so wait till then to make your unclever slashdotian comments, please.
Anonymous
October 13, 2008
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Anonymous
October 13, 2008
@ pndragon many people have large Hard drives with thousands of files. search does well. Search has been in windows for a long time, and it wont ever go away, not now with the 500GB and even 1TB hard drives
Anonymous
October 13, 2008
I personally dislike desktop search. While I don't have any problems with performance or space issue, I do have a problem with security. There is always a slightly higher chance that security is compromised by extra services or that my files can potentially be known from the index. The main reason why I don't like using desktop search is because of how rare I search. And whenever I do search, I usually restrict it to a specific folder so there's really no problem with time. While I can see why some people would like this feature, personally, I would prefer an option while installing Windows to remove desktop search (and all the other Windows programs and services I never use, like Help, Calendar, Mail, Media Player, Messenger, etc.) I have seen nLite, but that doesn't seem to work properly for me, but its close to what I desire from Windows.
Anonymous
October 13, 2008
Sorry, but I'm still too mad about you guys using WSUS to push Windows Search on all my machines to even think about downloading Windows Search 4.
Anonymous
October 13, 2008
@marcinw -- We think we've been trying to write about topics critical to a modern OS--the launching of programs, managing windows, booting the OS, graphics subsystem, and storage are all things I believe you would find as "core" parts of a modern OS beyond processes, scheduling, memory management, and so on (all of which are darn important as well and also part of an OS). In the first post we described how the PDC and WinHEC are the events where we will provide the in-depth look at the features of Windows 7 (and attendees will get the code). This blog set out to "provide context over the next 2+ months with regular posts about the behind the scenes development of the release and continue through the release of the product." Once code is out there we will start to blog more regularly about the details of the release that are supported in the code. I hope that makes sense, --Steven
Anonymous
October 13, 2008
I think many of the people who disable the search service are those same people who read those dodgy "optimize your PC" guides which recommend you disable all kinds of services (I've seen ones which recommend disabling "Windows Installer"!)
Anonymous
October 13, 2008
Windows will always have problems untill a total rewrite comes in to play. By rewrite I mean start off with a brand new code from scrartch
Anonymous
October 13, 2008
Ha, yeah, because a rewrite from scratch ALWAYS makes things better...
Anonymous
October 13, 2008
I'm a big fan of fast search, but there are a couple of things on Vista that I'd like to see improved.

I really hate attempting to double-click on search results, only to have the one I'm clicking on change position in the list before I hit it with the mouse, so I launch the wrong file. They should just come up in whatever order the search finds them, and I'll resort later if needed.
Search folders: These are too slow (and I'm on a quad-cpu x64 rig). I've set up a custom one as a sidebar link to pull up my recent project folders so I don't have to navigate through a drive full of them. However, it takes so long to pull this up, that I can probably find it faster without. Is it possible to have the system run this periodically in the background and cache the results so it would be instant? (then update it on a click only if the results change? or something?) Macs have a way of seeing recently accessed folders from open/save dialogs that is basically instant. It would be nice if Windows had a way of doing that.
That annoying "Searches might be slow" warning is really irritating on every single search. That should really go away, so if I don't want to index a folder I'm not pestered to do so.

Anonymous
October 13, 2008
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Anonymous
October 13, 2008
Maybe you can shed some light on this: I have some excel code that runs for about 20 seconds, in office 2003 (about 33 seconds in office 2007, but that’s another story) While it’s running, I run russinovich’s process monitor to see what’s happening. Well, out of 15,438 events, 7103 of the events are search related. 6317 are related to searchindexer.exe. I thought it was supposed to be dormant while the computer was busy? You want the logfile, I’ll gladly send it to whoever wants to analyze it.
Anonymous
October 13, 2008
Excuse me OT! Name of Windows 7 = http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2008/10/13/introducing-windows-7.aspx Nice!! I love this name , thank's :D
Anonymous
October 13, 2008
I for one was not very happy with the indexing and search features in XP. When Vista came out I was fairly happy with the improved performance. My only hesitation with using WDS is, as others have mentioned, the GUI. While the performance has been a bonus and decrease the time/resources spent finding files I have often found the interface a pain when trying more advanced searches. Trying to explain how to use this feature to less computer savy clients has often left them confused. I am looking forward to seeing a more user friendly interface with streamlined access to advanced functions in Windows 7.
Anonymous
October 13, 2008
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Anonymous
October 13, 2008
I have to second the hate on Superfetch. After I first installed Vista I noticed that the hdd was constantly thrashing. CONSTANTLY, as in every minute of every day, nothing but hdd activity. The level of activity made the system responsiveness incredibly unpredictable. Sometimes I could open an application right away, other times the hdd would just thrash a bit harder for 20 seconds while I waited. At first I figured Vista was just indexing everything and it would eventually settle down. But no ... a month later and the madness continued. So I started disabling services. I first disabled the index service. Then I disabled superfetch. Suddently the hdd stopped thrashing, and the slugishness was gone. Months later I re-enabled the indexing service because I needed to search my inbox in Outlook. Much to my surprise, the hdd didn't start thrashing and the slughishness did not return. So I've left it on, somewhat happier that I can now search for things. So for the love of Pete, could someone please fix superfetch? :)
Anonymous
October 13, 2008
Right, indexing is actually a nice thing. I would like to see a better UI for those panels. dockable, pinable,and shortcuts etc. But also would be good if you post an article about the accessories you have in windows. i.e. Notepad, Wordpad, Calculator, Paint, system tools etc. They were ridiculously outdated even in XP not talking about Vista. Ugly Win 95 UI and lacking modern features. OS-vise there are tons of features that should be accessible from everywhere. I understand that big revenue comes from Office, but Notepad, Wordpad is a joke.
Anonymous
October 13, 2008
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Anonymous
October 13, 2008
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Anonymous
October 13, 2008
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Anonymous
October 13, 2008
Privacy fears might be one reason why people disable indexing service. There are even some privacy tutorials that mentions this. Of course you use need to use something like Eraser to securely wipe files. But is file entry removed from index once you hit delete? Index, word has a bad reputation attached to it. Everyone knows (corrupted) index.dat files which don't get cleared. By the way Recycle Bin only offers Empty Recycle Bin option it would be nice to have built in Shred Recycle Bin option also.
Anonymous
October 13, 2008
2nd that Actually very IMPORTANT. SECURE deletion.
Anonymous
October 13, 2008
The "Desktop Search" doesn't find things I expect it to find, like a text file with a random extension. The normal Vista search confuses me. For example, I can never tell if it's searching for filenames or actual content. When I cancel a search and then change the search, I can't tell if the change got through. And you can't see what it's doing at the moment, the green bar just stands still on the right side of the toolbar. There's no status indication like "searching c:windowswinsxs..." which could give you a hint at why it's taking so long, or confirm that it's actually looking where you want it to look. So (even though it looks like I'm the only one) I just wanted to say that Windows Search isn't yet very usable for me.
Anonymous
October 13, 2008
I am a translator and I have thousands upon thousands of Office documents on my hard drive; from time to time I need to search for specific words or expressions in documents that are many years old. Theoretically at least, I am the perfect candidate for Windows Desktop Search. However, I only use WDS to index programs in the Start menu. For all other searches I prefer Copernic Desktop Search, which has much better UI (for my needs, at least) and the same low-IO priority feature. It has also been available on the market ever since XP SP2, and after Vista SP1 it has even integrated very nicely in the shell. So for me, WDS is too little, too late.
Anonymous
October 13, 2008
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Anonymous
October 14, 2008
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Anonymous
October 14, 2008
well, Windows desktop search 4.0 is pretty good than its predecessor. I would like to suggest a Reverse Engineering Search!. In searching of pictures, suppose that we have a million pictures, say pictures of people. Suppose we are giving a picture of a person, can there be a reverse engineering search where it displays the results according to the relevancy in the matches of the available pictures?!. In short words, we upload a photo and the search engine looks for matches in the available picture and display's the results!.
Anonymous
October 14, 2008
"The indexer also “backs off” when you are actively using your PC. It indexes files more slowly, or stops entirely depending on the level of activity on the PC. When the indexer is reading files it uses low priority I/O and CPU and immediately releases the file if another application needs access." In Windows Media Player this is definitly not true. I have set WMP11(Vista) to index my music-folder. Whenever i move an album to this directory my harddrive start thrashing and my cpu will start working even if i'm doing other stuff at the same time. If i try to rename the direcory just after i've copied it i will fail because the directory is being "used" (hmm, indexer maybe?). Moving files to other directories goes instantly without thrashing.
Anonymous
October 14, 2008
[What is happening to Comment submission here? have tried 5 times to submit a comment under both FF3 and IE7. Each time the comment "appears" to be received but doesn't appear. I'm also taken back to the http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/default.aspx page rather than seeing my comment or some text along the lines of "your comment will be reviewed by a moderator."
Anonymous
October 14, 2008
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Anonymous
October 14, 2008
Put it this way, if I was searching for a particular system file on my HDD and I mistyped the name of the file, then it's faster to query Google, let Google correct the name for me, and then download the file from an internet server, than to wait for Windows Search to find what I wanted on my HDD.
Anonymous
October 14, 2008
Vista search features are still very underwhelming for me.

Searching on start menu items is hampered in that it only matches leading substrings e.g. search for 'stitch' and 'Canon Photostitch' is not found.
Various search elements do not allow for conflation of accented characters. e.g. if I search for music composed by "Handel" then it won't optionally extend to searching for "Haendel" (I typed the accented a, but this form field is not accepting it). This is an issue within WMP's search as well - you never know how precise the metadata it downloads is going to be. actually most of WMP's search and filtering is designed in isolation to everything else that MS does. For example, create a smart-playlist that searches for Artist=X or Composer=X, and it returns a double result-set for every item that satisfies both. That makes a mess of playlists with this doubling or tripling up of some items (Resolved BY DESIGN).

Anonymous
October 14, 2008
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Anonymous
October 14, 2008

It really peeves me that you don't attempt to suggest alternate search strings based on keywords in the index (to cover cases like "wrod" above). Considering that I + one dev created a query control that did this look up AND did red-squiggle spell-checking AND did it multi-lingually back in 1997. Oh and yes it shipped as part of Picture It! image search and Office Clip Art gallery search a full decade ago. Put it this way, if I was searching for a particular system file on my HDD and I mistyped the name of the file, then it's faster to query Google, let Google correct the name for me, and then download the file from an internet server, than to wait for Windows Search to find what I wanted on my HDD.

Anonymous
October 14, 2008
I would like to see 2 menu items when I right click a folder in Explorer: "Add this folder to search index" - Quickly add new folders including subfolders "Re-index this folder" - When I think that not all files were found by Windows Search And maybe in right click menu on files: "Add this file type to search index" Would make things a lot easier.
Anonymous
October 14, 2008
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Anonymous
October 14, 2008
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Anonymous
October 14, 2008
I guess the file system is the source of the index issues. That files does not get indexed. WinFS would do the job. And of course you would not need the whole indexing procedure. It would be automatically done during file creation. The way it should be.
Anonymous
October 14, 2008
Search should not be core functionality of the OS. Sorry it a little off topic but modern OS's are going this way NetBSD is the best example it comes as a complete base OS then you build it up to what you need it to do. My idea of a perfect windows is to be able to purchase it without any optional pieces then add what i need, as i need it for whatever purpose the machine serves from Gaming platform to workstation to server. The vista model tried to emulate this very poorly by confusing OS functionality with features, 2008 server is much better on this but could use quite a bit of help becasue you guys are still confusing functionality with features; even with the server core implementation.
Anonymous
October 14, 2008
If the new x64 windows doesn't index network shares I'm going to beat the entire search team with an ugly stick. Where did it go? Why can't we have it back? And for the love of all that's good and holy put it in Windows 7.
Anonymous
October 14, 2008
Uh, WDS 4.0 indexes network shares.
Anonymous
October 14, 2008
gonzc900 a total rewrite? What are you on? why throw away years of well tested code? Yes, by all means update it. It does annoy me when people refer to Windows as needing a total rewrite, when neither Mac OSX (based on 30 year old BSD operating system) or Linux (based on a 18 year old clone of a 30 year old operating system!). What we need is less legacy support, as that is what often contains the security bugs. Take the recent GDI+ flaw. I think Microsoft should make GDI applications look visually older than WPF applications, as this would be the biggest intensive for developers to upgrade. We also need more rich .NET controls for WPF!
Anonymous
October 14, 2008
The Indexing is impressive because searches return results instantly. Allowing API tapping the index is a great idea bringing its full sens t this service. The gadget to see the content and to turn it on and off is great. Before reading the post I already wanted to talk about that. But why it has to be a gadget? Turning it on and off to free resources when we need 100% of our computer is not a gadget IMO. Looking at the content may be more "mundane", yet it may be helpful to know what type of info there is and what keywords to enter. I wouldn't emphasize too much about indexing multimedia meta datas: I know that among the hundreds of pictures on my PC none of them contain relevant meta data. None of my mp3 rips (music CD to mp3) contains such a metadata, but are perfectly sorted. Other media stuffs may contain meta datas but I don't know them or if there are any... etc But ok, the idea is good. The only source of imperfection (beside preformance hit) is the lack of configuration. I cry for more configuration with the indexing service: Like which folder/subfolder to scan or to ignore. Wich file extention/name (with*wildcard) to include/exclude. This is extremely important. For example I have thousands of file in some folders, I know perfectly what it is and in no the indexing service should search there. Off Topic: Chris McConnel wrote "Applications can also add support for indexing of data types that aren’t file-based at all, like your e-mail" Since Outlokk Express "Windows Mail", mails are file based.
Anonymous
October 14, 2008
I tried few versions of desktop search for XP including the last 4th one. As always ended up uninstalling it, for few reasons: First. Under XP IO is not prioritized unlike in Vista. Which causes your PC to lag like molasses. For some reason it never figures out that I'm actually doing something interactive and it does not back off with indexing. Second. I set it up to index my team's source tree but could not find how to make it skip the content of Subversion's internal folders (they are hidden and named .svn), so any results contained a ton of garbage. Third. Even though indexer tracks change notifications of the file system, when I'm doing search it still uses outdated indexes. Why can't it see that 10 out of several hundred thousand files were changed and instead of using indexed entries for them, it should fall back to regular 'grep' search. This is more serious issue, than it might appear at first. If search returns with empty result the conclusion user makes is that there are no files matching the query, not that there might be a part of the index missing. Fourth. If you invest so much into indexing/search algorithms, why is it hard to add regex?
Anonymous
October 14, 2008
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Anonymous
October 14, 2008
I can see that Windows Search and the "Indexer" is something that Microsoft has a lot of faith/investment in at this point so I wont waste words being overly critical. Only this, please realize that the level of acceptance of this feature hinges on the hard drive not looking like its constantly being ground up some rogue "indexer process" that I dont use very often. I really do believe that most people including myself are minimalists when it comes to their os.
Anonymous
October 14, 2008
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Anonymous
October 14, 2008
quoted from Fredledingue's comment: "What should have happened is that a new file system should have been created where updating the index was part of the file create/modify API. That would mean you always had an up to date index, and the system would never need to be scanned." Interresting comment but I don't know if it's realistic/realisable and if it won't slow down the PC even more than indexing at the end. Quote end. If i'm not mistaken, several linux filesystems like ext3 already have that feature and it's working fine.
Anonymous
October 14, 2008
I gave the Vista indexer a chance and ran it for a year. I disabled the indexer because: A. I very rarely search for files, I know where they are. B. Why waste resources on something I do not use or need. C. I had some corrupted file/indexer issues. I've been very happy since. The performance hit may be small but cumulatively stopping unneeded services and startup items does make a large difference in performance and stability.
Anonymous
October 14, 2008
I'd like to hear from the search team on why a new version of NTFS wasn't created to integrate indexing as mentioned by other posters, was there not enough time, you don't think it's the right approach, etc?
Anonymous
October 14, 2008
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Anonymous
October 14, 2008
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Anonymous
October 14, 2008
Hairs said: "There should be no background indexing at all. No matter how much you minimise it, it's there. What should have happened is that a new file system should have been created where updating the index was part of the file create/modify API. That would mean you always had an up to date index, and the system would never need to be scanned." This might sound great in theory, but think about how it would work in practice. When Windows Vista first shipped, people complained that file copies seemed to take longer than on XP. Could you imagine the reaction of indexing were made to be a synchronous part of the I/O pipeline? Everybody would love to get to a point where indexing is fast and cheap enough to be made synchronous with the filesystem (and this doesn't have to mean it's a "part" of the filesystem, though I guess that's delving into pedantics). We're working and making progress toward that end, but it's not something that's feasible to just switch on overnight. Besides, most of the time you just want to copy the file and then open it as fast as possible, you don't want to copy it and then immediately search for it. So we make indexing an asynchronous background task so that the common case is optimized and the slower work is deferred.
Anonymous
October 14, 2008
@smartpatrol Which is older? NT or Mach? ;)
Anonymous
October 14, 2008
I'm part of the 1.5% that disable the indexer. If 1.5% of people are turning it off, it's annoying 15% to 30% of the users. I didn't turn it off because I think it's affecting performance, I turned it off because I want my computer to be quiet. If I'm not actively using my computer, it probably means that I'm reading and the last thing I want is for my hard drive to start clicking it's brains out. I'm also amazed at how often a search fails to find anything, even when I know it's out there. I just did a search on "GenerateBootstrapper". I know it's out there but it didn't find anything. I changed the search to "Bootstrapper", and it finds it. That's not useful. I would like to be able to tell the indexer that it can index only between 1am and 6am. I would also like a "Be quiet and slow" option to disable things like SuperFetch.
Anonymous
October 14, 2008
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Anonymous
October 14, 2008
@alamfour That is incorrect. SuperFetch is not really at all related to the prefetcher. The prefetcher still exists in Vista, and it works largely the same as in XP (as in, it kicks in at the moment an application begins to launch, and streamlines the loading of that application). SuperFetch is actually quite different, and does do far more I/O, though it is background priority. SuperFetch is more related to the disk cache than to the prefetcher.
Anonymous
October 14, 2008
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Anonymous
October 14, 2008
@alamfour -- NT was not "rewritten" for 2000 or for longhorn/vista. It certainly evolves, and features are added, but never is it entirely or even significantly (>20%) rewritten.
Anonymous
October 15, 2008
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Anonymous
October 15, 2008
My biggest complaint about search in Vista, is just to many places to search from. That really comes down to allowing customizations and choice with the UI. Vista's UI is no choice, it's Microsoft's way. Putting ribbons on Vista and not allowing customizations or choice is nothing more that putting lipstick on a pig. The photos I've seen Windows 7 is, "Lipstick on a Pig." I hope I'm wrong. As far as the search goes, please allow user's some choice, is it really necessary to be able to search from 90 billzion places in the operating system. Please allow some choice. Hopefully when the beta comes out you will have some real discussion on the UI, not just aspects of it. Once this gets to beta I hope Microsoft is more open to change than they were in the beta's of Vista, or for that matter in the Beta's of IE 8. "Vita per Moenia"
Anonymous
October 15, 2008
"This might sound great in theory, but think about how it would work in practice. When Windows Vista first shipped, people complained that file copies seemed to take longer than on XP. Could you imagine the reaction of indexing were made to be a synchronous part of the I/O pipeline?" So make it an asynchronous part of the I/O pipeline. Once the file itself has been created, the CreateFile() call can return. And Windows can then run an async job to update the index with this file. Problem solved. ;) Also, when copying a file, it surely isn't CreateFile() which slows it down. Writing a small index entry won't really be that noticeable when you're copying a file. The slow part is in transferring the data. "I didn't turn it off because I think it's affecting performance, I turned it off because I want my computer to be quiet. If I'm not actively using my computer, it probably means that I'm reading and the last thing I want is for my hard drive to start clicking it's brains out." Very good point. I often want my computer to be silent, and then I don't want the OS to take command of my harddrive. If I can't make it quit messing around with the harddrive, I'll disable the service that causes it. Apart from that, I'm a bit disappointed that this blog post didn't actually talk about anything related to Windows 7. It seems it could really just be boiled down to "Here's what we did in Vista, and it wasn't as bad as people say" Just seems a bit out of place. :)
Anonymous
October 15, 2008
@PatriotB NT was rewritten for windows 2000. NT 4.0 had an architectural flaw that could be fixed with a patch, but needed a rewrite to fix. That is why Windows 2000 was a near total rewrite of the NT kernel. Vista is also a near complete rewrite of the Windows 2000 Kernel. The Kernel was striped down and componantised. (Ever heard of MinWin) Just think back to when Vista was realesed to the consumer market in January 07. Why so many programs did not work and hardware peripherals not work. Because Vista was nothing like the 2000/XP kernel. Later patches and updates where silently released to all windows Vista users vie Windows Update upgradeing the compatability of programs and hardware with Vista. Also microsoft partners realesed patches and driver updates (all bet slowly) that correct the incompatabilities. So Again I will say the Kernel in Vista and Server 2008 is only 4 years old (counting from the 2004 longhorn reset).
Anonymous
October 15, 2008
@screwballl What DRM are you talking about. There is no DRM in the Kernel. DRM is a service provided to media providers to prevent illegal copies of their media (ie music and movies not software). The only protection that microsoft have on Windows (not the kernel but windows as a whole) is WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage) which is run every time an update is requested and installed by your machine. Even then, if you are found to have an illegal copy you system is locked down. You just get a black background on you desktop with a screen warning you that you may be the victim of Pirated software. That is it. NO DRM IN NT KERNEL!!!!!!
Anonymous
October 15, 2008
Check the owner of the system files. It's someone called "trusted installer". In case you exchange these files with identical copies (you need to take the ownership to do it), they won't work because you are not a "trusted installer". Vista is DRM ready.
Anonymous
October 15, 2008
@Jalf "So make it an asynchronous part of the I/O pipeline. Once the file itself has been created, the CreateFile() call can return. And Windows can then run an async job to update the index with this file. Problem solved. ;)" Cool! That's what we have today! I love when people suggest we make things they way they are :) "Also, when copying a file, it surely isn't CreateFile() which slows it down. Writing a small index entry won't really be that noticeable when you're copying a file. The slow part is in transferring the data." Not sure what you mean here. "Writing a small index entry" isn't the problem. The problem is loading the property handler code for that filetype, and the IFilter for that file type, then cracking the file with one or both of those to extract the metadata and contents. Then the indexer needs to process the content. THEN you write the index entry.
Anonymous
October 16, 2008
WDS lacks the simple feature I need the most. I don't care about metadata. I care only about their names. There isn't an easy and efficient way to search in ALL files' names. I don't want to index contents of my millions of files. I just want it to index their names.
Anonymous
October 16, 2008
>In case you exchange these files with identical copies (you need to take the ownership to do it), they won't work It's a lie. I patched my uxtheme.dll on the live system.
Anonymous
October 17, 2008
To those who camplain that we are complaining... We (at least 3 or 4 posters here and me) don't want "more options" for the search tool. We want the basic options to be easily accessible and presented in a simplier manner.
Anonymous
October 18, 2008
"Within Windows, a more comprehensive search option allowed you to also examine the contents of the files, but this wasn’t widely used. It was fairly basic functionality – it treated all files just the same, without the tapping in to the rich metadata properties available in the files. " These lines are totally incorrect. There was an indexing service dating back to at least windows 2000, may be more, which was pretty much the predecessor of what WDS is today. The service executable is cisvc.exe and uses worker processes named cideamon.exe for actually indexing if I am not mistaken.
Anonymous
October 18, 2008
Does windows Media Player use the index? It seems to have to index my music folders (which have already been indexed by Vista). When I delete files they still appear in Media Player.
Anonymous
October 19, 2008
Windows Media Player has its own index file, which partly explains why searching for music/video in Windows is so idiosyncratic and unintegrated into the general search experience. ( If you've even been in a beta for it, you'll know that every divergence from standard behaviour is BY DESIGN). One of WMP11's special idiosyncrasies is to keep reindexing the Recycle Bin. Now that Microsoft is off chasing the WMP-incompatible Zune, the chances of anything like that getting fixed in a hurry are ratehr low.
Anonymous
October 19, 2008
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Anonymous
October 20, 2008
SEARCH - i deadly miss contect meny item Search... (or Find..) or whatever You name it. Okay sometimes i can use Indexed, but if i need search from CD/DVD etc.. archive - then it is not an option. And for some oddly reason searching from allmost known location is still faster than searching with Index ? ;)
Anonymous
October 22, 2008
The really problem Windows Vista has is the search in non-indexed locations. Yes, it's the worse. Index is great and search by tags etc, but it's really impossible to find something somewhere in system directories, like temporary internet files, appdata etc. It's either very slow, or impossible at all. Then the deleted in Vista SP1 Search applet is a really bad idea (hate google) because custom search becomes much more complicated (I mean the search in number of folders by name or date, moreover if they are not indexed). So I should use some 3rd party application for such a query. It's really annoying and disappointing that Vista can do such a complicated query like search by metadata tags and can't do such a stupid search, that was a native feature during the years, including Windows XP.
Anonymous
November 10, 2008
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Anonymous
November 10, 2008
ok after reading more posts I have to rant even more. I never search. I know where all my files are. I don't have a printer. Why is there a print spooler running? I don't use a digital camera, scanner, or other useless cruft with my gaming machine. I use a different computer for misc tasks and my main fast computer for gaming and occasionally web browsing and listening to music while I game. Nothing else. I dont burn CDs, I don't rip DVDs I don't even use the start menu. I have my game Icons on my desktop and even use blank wallpaper and set my screen saver to blank on that computer. I'm even considering replacing explorer.exe with something more minimal. You may think that all of this is "l337 g4mer" nonsense, but you have no idea just how much of a difference it makes.
Anonymous
January 20, 2009
great article, cool blog thank you very much :)
Anonymous
February 23, 2009
why WDS is better then StopKa - desktop search tool? www.stopka.us this is work only 1 person. it speed is much better :) so I better than dozen of "you" ;)
Anonymous
February 23, 2009
why WDS is better then StopKa - desktop search tool? www.stopka.us this is work only 1 person. it speed is much better :) so I'm better than dozen of "you" ;)
Anonymous
August 15, 2009
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Anonymous
February 17, 2010
Very frustrated with Windows Search. It doesn't search non-indexed locations by default. It doesn't think I need to search for system files. It doesn't search for contents of files in non-indexed locations. SO, if I have an application that puts files in a location other than my documents, (VERY common for applications that may be shared among multiple users on a PC) and I want to search those files for a string, I can't do it. Example: I have an application that sends a list of checks, recipients, and amounts to the bank each day. It keeps a log of the checks and amounts in a file named "C:BANKDATAChecks_YYYYMMDD.txt". If I want to search for a certain check number to validate that it went to the bank, I simply can't do it.
Anonymous
February 18, 2010
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Anonymous
March 01, 2010
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Anonymous
March 15, 2010
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Anonymous
March 20, 2010
I want a limited file type and content search.. Windows / MS .. you got it all wrong again.. thank you for F*** up the works
Anonymous
March 20, 2010
I want a limited file type and content search.. Windows / MS .. you got it all wrong again.. thank you for F*** up the works
Anonymous
April 14, 2010
Going through the comments, you can see how terrible MS is at user interface. They had something the worked (Search in XP) and now they have somthing that looks pretty but doesnt. They tried to add features ... I JUST WANT TO SEACH FOR A FILE WITH AN EXTENSION OF A PARTICULAR SIZE MADE AFTER A PARTICULAR DATE. Why have they taken that ability away ????
Anonymous
April 20, 2010
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Anonymous
April 21, 2010
This search is so bad! I have spent my whole work day surfing the net looking for a way that I can find "Program Files" using this search. It really can't get any worse than that. Why can't this search engine find anything? What a POS. Third party apps is the only way to fix this 'cause obviously Microsoft won't.
Anonymous
May 04, 2010
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Anonymous
June 17, 2010
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Anonymous
June 28, 2010
I like Windows 7 desktop search. Unfortunately, while I have Windows 7 installed on my home machine, search capability has disappeared. I do not know whether I have done something inappropriate or not. But I would like to re-enable search. Any suggestions?
Anonymous
August 25, 2010
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Anonymous
August 26, 2010
I'm really happy that MS is taking care about plain users, but how about professionals? Why I need to go and use 3rd party grep in Win7/Vista or bust Search Assistant in XP when Win2000 had perfectly working search? If you want to make search "faster" by omitting 70% of the content from the search - be my guest, but leave working part of the tool alone!
Anonymous
November 02, 2010
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Anonymous
December 08, 2010
You are not constantly improving. The few seconds required to find those files I needed to locate with specific content in XP and even Vista, which was not an improvement at all, were more than compensated by the ability to find content. Despite checking the option to search files and content in search options, search does not find those files with the needed information. Please add both the simple XP and the bolean based vista options to the next service pack or make them available.
Anonymous
December 17, 2010
I can't find a Download Link for Search-4 for Windows-7 !!! Please help.
Anonymous
January 24, 2011
Windows Search on - Task takes 15 minutes to complete. When OFF - same task takes 3 minutes. Measurements are consistent. Windows Search is extremely resource consuming and totally unfit for work environments.
Anonymous
February 16, 2011
Like Windows 7 - I think if Windows search is set up properly it should be a help rather than a hindrance! www.emailsecuritymatters.com/.../windows-search-windows-7-outlook-2007
Anonymous
April 12, 2011
Would be nice to allow the old fashion type of search if needed.
Anonymous
May 12, 2011
The fact that there is no way to search a directory in Windows 7 for files containing a particular string is a serious omission it used to be possible in XP. Why do Microsoft have to keep making all their search products progressively worse!
Anonymous
July 01, 2011
Doesn't really answer the question. Do you need both? Indexing Service and Windows Search: yes or no. Thanks.
Anonymous
September 08, 2011
Our office previously used Windows XP with Windows Search 4.0 add-in. Indiviual desktop users were able to index various folders and subfolders on various network drives. We were also able to "snooze" the search function during a busy day (since it slowed the computer significantly) and restart it after business hours so that we always had a reasonably upto date index for fast searches and recall from the 1,000's of files. There was a pulsating magifying glass on the task tool bar that let you know when you were indexing. We have recently migrated to Windows 7 and I cannot discover how to continually index so that I have an up-to-date index from which to search. Also, and more importantly, I cannot add network drives for indexing, even though I have access to the network drives. I tried to download and install Search 4.0, but got a message that: "The version of Windows you have installed does not match the update you are trying to install." Most of our IT people have never used Windows Search 4.0 add-in and don't appreciate the absence of this functionality in Windows 7. Does anyone have any suggetstion of how to get the same functionality in Windows 7?
Anonymous
September 09, 2011
One of the biggest tradeoffs with search in Windows 7 is that you will never be able to find anything, even if the file you're looking for is staring you in the face.
Anonymous
October 13, 2011
I have windows 7 OS on my laptop. When I need to search for a file containing a string of words I am not able to find it. In Windows XP it was not a problem at all. Please help.
Anonymous
December 04, 2011
I want to be able to complete my work and stay organized. Why are you making it difficult to impossible? I know my files are there! How is it useful to have them and not be able to access them?
Anonymous
December 18, 2012
Why doesn't search work in Windows 7? It can't even find text files let alone text in files. I've tried everything.
Anonymous
June 02, 2013
Why windows desktop search is not working in windows 7??? I'm very happy with windows desktop search in windows XP. Anyone can help me how to use desktop search engine windows 7???
Anonymous
July 27, 2013
I used to be able to search for words in filenames. Now it only searches text in files. I do not need that, for me it is a waste of time. But finding a file by its title, in the myriads of folders that I deal with, is essential. Is there some way I can force it to search titles, not contents?
Anonymous
October 26, 2014
I use the alternative Lookeen. It's a rising search tool and still works perfect. Its easy and fast to operate and finds every single file on your pc. You can try the 14 days trial on www.lookeen.com Rear: I work for the company which developed Lookeen.
Anonymous
May 07, 2015
Desktop Search really is a great tool to work with especially with all this data nowadays. I don't dislike the Windows Search but with all the features Windows offers I sometimes think that they spared to much time for some great features while taking their time for features no one needs... They bought Lookout and "integrated" it in Windows, but the search is still not competitive with third party search tools like Lookeen Free.
Anonymous
July 17, 2015
'If you wanted to perform the same search again, you would “pay” again.' Silly salestalk. I'd rather pay over and over again, rather than not be able to buy at all. Do you people think we search from "C:" every time? Do you not know about the use of file extensions in a search term? As for 'paying', how much time have I paid researching how to make the once-useable search function work to my benefit? At the cost of a few seconds per search, I've spent hours not getting anywhere and MANUALLY perusing files. Super smart, guys! Smarter, is that this near decade-old document is what my plea for aid brings me to.

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