PLEASE teach me how to use the search feature !!!!!!!

[Jim]

I have never seen a more complicated search area.......all I want to
do is search My C drive and anything that, with Vista, now falls under
my username (including, documents, pictures, etc.)
How could they make it so complicated...and why???????
What is the need for "Indexed Locations?" Why was it never needed
before.
Complicated is not necessarily better.
I tried to search for a file I KNEW was on my computer...a file called
Mom.doc.
I tried everything I could and changed search areas and went to
Advanced search............I NEVER did locate the file.
I went to My computer and found it iner my username/documents and
there it was !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Nothing else in Vista has infuriated me as much as the Seach !!!!!!

 

[Adam Albright]

I have never seen a more complicated search area.......all I want to
do is search My C drive and anything that, with Vista, now falls under
my username (including, documents, pictures, etc.)
How could they make it so complicated...and why???????
What is the need for "Indexed Locations?" Why was it never needed
before.
Complicated is not necessarily better.
I tried to search for a file I KNEW was on my computer...a file called
Mom.doc.
I tried everything I could and changed search areas and went to
Advanced search............I NEVER did locate the file.
I went to My computer and found it iner my username/documents and
there it was !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Nothing else in Vista has infuriated me as much as the Seach !!!!!!

Agreed, Vista's Search is a Paradox it that can be both much easier
and sometimes also harder to find things then it was in other versions
of Windows. Often using only the basic search available when you click
on the Start button and just start typing something will find what you
want quickly. Remember this Search tries to look at everything,
applications, your files, the works.

If you use Advanced Search you can refine what is searched for.

The options in Advance Search may confuse some until you use it a few
times. At the top is Location. By default Search only looks at what
was Indexed. This is another Paradox since WHAT is indexed is
controllable by you the user. If you type Index in Vista's help you
can learn more on how Indexing works.

In a nutshell by default Vista only indexes what IT, not you thinks
you'll need limiting the search to mostly what's in your personal
folder. So if you are like me and store files all over your computer
in folders on different drives UNLESS you tell Vista to include these
folders in it's searching it never looks there. This probably is the
number one reason people report they can't find what they're looking
for when they know is on their computer somewhere.

So if you click on the little down pointing arrow to the right of the
Location box and change it to 'Everywhere' or tell it to look in just
one particular hard drive or folder if you think that's where the file
you're looking for should be that's what Search will do, just look
where you tell it.

The third Paradox is typical Microsoft User unfriendly design style,
even if you select 'everywhere' that doesn't mean Search will
automatically return 'everything'. To do that you must also check the
box that reads include non indexed, hidden and system files.

So if you were looking for mom.doc, the way to ensure Vista should
find it would be select everything in location and also check to look
in non indexed, hidden and system files. This isn't to suggest that
mom.doc was hidden or a system file, rather to totally unrestrict the
search.

That so far this is the brute force method. It works, but often may be
slow. The other options in Advance Search let you refine the search.
If you knew your mom.doc file was created before or after some date
you could restrict search to that range, which should find it faster.

In a similar vain if you're sure you know the name of the file or even
just part of it is 'mom' then use the appropriate fields to restrict
searching to any file with the word 'mom' in it. In a similar way you
can limit searching by looking at tags and other items.

Common sense and practice goes a long way to using search effectively
just like using a search engine like Google. If you know the file you
are looking for has the word 'mom' in it then it makes sense to search
for 'mom', since it is unlikely you have more than a handful of files
with mom in the name. If however you searched for '.doc' that would
return every doc file on your system which could be hundreds or
thousands.

 

[keepout]

I have never seen a more complicated search area.......all I want to
do is search My C drive and anything that, with Vista, now falls under
my username (including, documents, pictures, etc.)
How could they make it so complicated...and why???????
What is the need for "Indexed Locations?" Why was it never needed
before.
Complicated is not necessarily better.
I tried to search for a file I KNEW was on my computer...a file called
Mom.doc.
I tried everything I could and changed search areas and went to
Advanced search............I NEVER did locate the file.
I went to My computer and found it iner my username/documents and
there it was !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Nothing else in Vista has infuriated me as much as the Seach !!!!!!

Search.. and [not responding]. My 2 biggest Vista gripes.
This might be of some use. I was fiddling with the search the other day, and
saw something I'd never noticed before. I set my search for DEFAULTS. Still no
happy searching.
Went back to change my search prefs, and saw it said
Drive Exclude
C: nothing actually here..
===============================================
I went in and went to change the search locations. It had 2 folders set to
search.. And I wonder why it can't find any thing...

I set it to search C:. hit advanced, and found just selecting C: wasn't enough.
It doesn't come with Expand all, so it may take you some time to SELECT the
entire C: drive.
I scrolled down, and the USERS section is NOT set to be searched. The section
of every drive where everything takes place.
Once I thought I'd toggled everything on C: to search
the screen looked like this

Drive
C: nothing actually here..
============================================
The exclude had disappeared. The machine has been rebuilding the search index
for 2 days now.
You do have to tell it to rebuild the index before quitting.
Then reboot to get the rebuild started.
Will it find what I'm looking for, can't tell you...But it now has access[I
assume] to the entire drive with nothing excluded.

I also made some other changes in explorers folder options.
I turned on the file check boxes, and turned on 'let me see system files'not
recommended. You just have to be extra careful about what you delete fromthis
point on.
the check boxes needed turning on since hover in Vista, no longer selectsa
file like it did with XP and I got tired of tabbing to select them.

I'm considering hide system files again, but I suspect that may hide the user
sections. Hmmm. looks like Vista doesn't listen to me. I don't need to turn off
'system and operating' files again. It didn't take when I toggled it the other
day.
I just hate a machine with a mind of it's own.

Well it found what it couldn't find with a seeing eye dog before I fixed it..
So I'd say use what I described above, and see if it works for you.
It actually found what it couldn't find the other day faster than I did and I
knew where to find it this time..

 

[Paul Randall]

Agreed, Vista's Search is a Paradox it that can be both much easier
and sometimes also harder to find things then it was in other versions
of Windows. Often using only the basic search available when you click
on the Start button and just start typing something will find what you
want quickly. Remember this Search tries to look at everything,
applications, your files, the works.

If you use Advanced Search you can refine what is searched for.

The options in Advance Search may confuse some until you use it a few
times. At the top is Location. By default Search only looks at what
was Indexed. This is another Paradox since WHAT is indexed is
controllable by you the user. If you type Index in Vista's help you
can learn more on how Indexing works.

In a nutshell by default Vista only indexes what IT, not you thinks
you'll need limiting the search to mostly what's in your personal
folder. So if you are like me and store files all over your computer
in folders on different drives UNLESS you tell Vista to include these
folders in it's searching it never looks there. This probably is the
number one reason people report they can't find what they're looking
for when they know is on their computer somewhere.

So if you click on the little down pointing arrow to the right of the
Location box and change it to 'Everywhere' or tell it to look in just
one particular hard drive or folder if you think that's where the file
you're looking for should be that's what Search will do, just look
where you tell it.

The third Paradox is typical Microsoft User unfriendly design style,
even if you select 'everywhere' that doesn't mean Search will
automatically return 'everything'. To do that you must also check the
box that reads include non indexed, hidden and system files.

So if you were looking for mom.doc, the way to ensure Vista should
find it would be select everything in location and also check to look
in non indexed, hidden and system files. This isn't to suggest that
mom.doc was hidden or a system file, rather to totally unrestrict the
search.

That so far this is the brute force method. It works, but often may be
slow. The other options in Advance Search let you refine the search.
If you knew your mom.doc file was created before or after some date
you could restrict search to that range, which should find it faster.

In a similar vain if you're sure you know the name of the file or even
just part of it is 'mom' then use the appropriate fields to restrict
searching to any file with the word 'mom' in it. In a similar way you
can limit searching by looking at tags and other items.

Common sense and practice goes a long way to using search effectively
just like using a search engine like Google. If you know the file you
are looking for has the word 'mom' in it then it makes sense to search
for 'mom', since it is unlikely you have more than a handful of files
with mom in the name. If however you searched for '.doc' that would
return every doc file on your system which could be hundreds or
thousands.

Hi, Adam
Is there a free and easy way, scripting perhaps, or a shortcut, or registry
settins, that will allow having the options preset to search everywhere on
the hard drives, with nothing hidden from the search and everything found
returned in the list?

-Paul Randall

 

[Jim]

Thanks, gents, for all the help !! I really don't care how long it
takes to find the file for which I'm searching so I have it set for an
expansive search as you have suggested.
Perhaps in time, I will narrow it down!
Now I want to see if the areas I have chosen "stick" next time I do a
search !!
I'll let you know.............

 

[notaguru]

It would be great if we could save defaults -- EVERYWHERE and
EVERYTHING.

 

[David]

I have never seen a more complicated search area.......all I want to
do is search My C drive and anything that, with Vista, now falls under
my username (including, documents, pictures, etc.)
How could they make it so complicated...and why???????
What is the need for "Indexed Locations?" Why was it never needed
before.
Complicated is not necessarily better.
I tried to search for a file I KNEW was on my computer...a file called
Mom.doc.
I tried everything I could and changed search areas and went to
Advanced search............I NEVER did locate the file.
I went to My computer and found it iner my username/documents and
there it was !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Nothing else in Vista has infuriated me as much as the Seach !!!!!!

the search feature, when the Indexing service is turned on, does not
find files on either of 2 of my Vista laptops. Even after rebuilding
the index, it just PLAIN DOESN'T WORK. Out of 300+ files of one type,
it manages to find only 5 of them, and they are all in the same folder,
I impatiently waited more than 10 days for the index to rebuilt it's
pathetically useless self. Before i rebuilt the index, vista would find
the wrong files. for example, if I typed "*.d", it would find files
with extensions other than those with a d in them. after the index
rebuilt, that problem went away, BUT it still couldnt find many files on
my pcs. search works fine on my pcs AFTER I turned off the indexing
service. go figure. bill gates is too damn rich to give a flying crap
about how shoddy his latest fiasco is. we are so screwed....

Dave

 

[Alias]

the search feature, when the Indexing service is turned on, does not
find files on either of 2 of my Vista laptops. Even after rebuilding
the index, it just PLAIN DOESN'T WORK. Out of 300+ files of one type,
it manages to find only 5 of them, and they are all in the same folder,
I impatiently waited more than 10 days for the index to rebuilt it's
pathetically useless self. Before i rebuilt the index, vista would find
the wrong files. for example, if I typed "*.d", it would find files
with extensions other than those with a d in them. after the index
rebuilt, that problem went away, BUT it still couldnt find many files on
my pcs. search works fine on my pcs AFTER I turned off the indexing
service. go figure. bill gates is too damn rich to give a flying crap
about how shoddy his latest fiasco is. we are so screwed....

Dave

If you're tired of this crap, check out Ubuntu, a free Open Source
operating system with access to over 25,000 programs. Check it out at
www.ubuntu.com/ I would wait, however, until Oct 19 when the new
version, Gutsy, comes out.

 

[David]

My solution for Vista's broken Search feature? Google Desktop Search.
It finds my files quickly. I just wish the thumbnails it shows were
larger and had the correct aspect ratio.

Dave

 

[Adam Albright]

Hi, Adam
Is there a free and easy way, scripting perhaps, or a shortcut, or registry
settins, that will allow having the options preset to search everywhere on
the hard drives, with nothing hidden from the search and everything found
returned in the list?

I never looked for anything in the Registry, could be something there.
I use it different ways all the time so I just left as is and change
as I need to.

I do NOT recommend you index everything because then Vista will
literally do that including all the system files, thousands and
thousands of them, which will only slow down search results.

One thing that may help depending how many files you have and your
pain threshold for Vista trashing away indexing is you can tell Vista
what to index by going to the Advanced Search page, then click on
Search Tools, then Modify Indexed locations. The first window shows
what Vista is currently indexing and will automatically be searched.

If you click Modify you can include or exclude drives/folders.

So if you don't want to be bothering changing things in Advance Search
every time you try to look for something one approach is to customize
WHAT drives/folders will index automatically. What you want to index
is probably very different than Microsoft's default settings which is
only going to look at a few folders, mainly what you put under Users
since Microsoft foolishly assumes people will put all their data in
their root drive.

Lets use a small example. Assume you have two hard drives and you save
your data files on your E Drive. Further assume you have folders on
your E drive named spreadsheets, documents and images. You keep ALL
your data in these three folders.

The goal is to get Vista to ALWAYS index these folders so
automatically without needing to mess with settings in Advance Search
you only need to type in what you're looking for.

1. Go to the Advanced Search Page, click on Search Tools, modify
Search Locations.

2. The first window that opens shows the number of files currently
indexed plus what drives/folders are getting indexed. Click the
Modify button, then show all locations.

3. A new window opens. The top pane shows a directory tree similar
to Windows Explorer. Locate Drive E, expand it should show the full
directory tree with a bunch of check marks. Walk down the list
and uncheck any folders on your E Drive you do NOT want to be
indexing. In our example that would leave folders named
spreadsheets, documents and images checked.

4. In the bottom pane you should see Drive E listed and in the
exclude column all the folders you want to ignore. If it is
a big list you won't be able to read them all. Click OK.

5. Test to see if Vista now automatically finds any files in
these newly indexed folders.

In effect what you've done doing this is tell Vista my data is always
here, here, and here. Index it for me. Since you'll probably never
need or want to search through system files or any files that make up
applications you should greatly reduce the time it takes to search
since you're only searching your actual data. Of course you can expand
on this to include as many folders as you care to index. The down side
is the more your add the more trashing Vista may do in the background.

 

[keepout]

Thanks, gents, for all the help !! I really don't care how long it
takes to find the file for which I'm searching so I have it set for an
expansive search as you have suggested.
Perhaps in time, I will narrow it down!
Now I want to see if the areas I have chosen "stick" next time I do a
search !!
I'll let you know.............

Since this is just something I found recently. and my search NOW works the way
it should. Re-read what I said about the 'EXCLUDE' then EXPAND whatever you
have selected to search. Chances are good the SYSTEM section of your drive is
EXCLUDED, but you won't know till you expand it and see what's excluded.