Does the "Search" feature work properly?

[Rastaman]

Does the "search" feature work properly?

I am testing search by looking for files that I know are on my computer, and
it will not find them.

Maybe it does not like the way permissions are set on some folders or drives
and is not looking in those locations?

I have modified the index to include every drive on my computer, but the
number of items in the index is only about half of the files on my computer.
(c:\Program Files and c:\ProgramData are for some reason excluded from the
index, even though I don't want them to be excluded.)

If i use the search button on the start menu, it finds files most of the
time,(but not always) -- If i search from windows explorer, it does not find
many of the files I search for.

When search does not find my file, I get a message in the status bar that
says "0 items(5,000 filtered out)" One time I browsed to the drive where
the file I wanted was located and started the search from there, and 23,000
items were filtered out, but when I start the search from "computer", it
always filters out 5,000

So far, this is the only problem I have with Vista -- With previous
versions of Windows, I was always confident that the search results were
reliable -- If a file was not found, then the file was not on my machine.
With Vista, I never know. If I really need to find a file, I will have to
reboot into XP to find the file from there. Not good.

Also - I would much prefer not to use indexing at all -- I rarely need to
use search, as I know where my files are and it is quicker to just browse to
them. I would rather have my searches take longer and have more free
resources on my machine, but without indexing enabled, "Search" rarely finds
anything.

If this is not bugged, then it really needs to be simplified.

 

[R.U. Zerious]

You can have it always search the filesystem. Click the arrow next to any
search box and choose Search Options. Or open Folder Options and click the
Search tab. You'll see the different options there. I don't know that you
can completely get rid of the index. But you can tweak things enough that it
works pretty much the same as it did before.

The downside is that any virtual folders you create will take longer to
open. They won't be as perky as opening real folders, like that are when you
use the index.