Search Does Not Work in Windows Explorer

[Chaplain Doug]

Windows XP sr2. Windows Server 2003. When I use the Windows Explorer and
browse to a folder, then do a search (search companion) of files, folders,
and subfolders for a "word or phrase in the file," it ALWAYS returns no
results. This happens even when I KNOW there are multiple files (in this
instance aspx files) that have the word in them! Why does not this important
function work!?

 

[Jason Piercey]

Does this help?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309173

 

[Chaplain Doug]

Did that. Now it returns one file when I know there are at least 12 files
with the word in them. This is a pretty worthless "search" tool. Any other
thoughts? Thanks for the help.

 

[Bob I]

Just use Agent Ransack from

http://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack/

 

[frodo]

if you really want to do a "search within the contents of files" you
should get a better tool than the XP built-in search - it's just slow and
incomplete.

There is the Windows Desktop Search tool from MS, the Google Destop Search
tool from Google, and several others (Yahoo has one, Agent Ransack has
one, Copernic, etc). Search for and review each one and see how it looks
to you, they all have their strengths/weaknesses. Most are free or have
free versions available. The "best" for-pay tool is X1, and Copernic is a
free (somewhat older) version of X1.

I would not recommend installing more that one at a time, just to be safe.
Choose, evaluate and if you don't like it remove it and try another.

FWIW IMHO, the Google Desktop Search is pretty good, small, and
low-impact, but includes desktop widgets which you may or may not like;
they can be turned off if you dig around in the config.

Good Luck.

 

[mayayana]

Did that. Now it returns one file when I know there are at least 12 files

with the word in them. This is a pretty worthless "search" tool. Any other
thoughts? Thanks for the help.

I asked the same question last week. No one
seemed to know the answer. More surprisingly,
no one seems to have noticed! It all works fine -
and quickly - in Win9x, but I feel like I just can't
trust XP to do a sesarch properly, and it doesn't
seem to be able to look inside "binary" files at all,
while Win98 has no trouble. (I discovered that
problem while looking for system files in the Windows
CABs. Win98 can tell me which CAB contains the
file because the CAB contents are in the CAB header
as a plain text list. But XP fails to find anything.)

 

[Donald Lessau]

Windows XP sr2. Windows Server 2003. When I use the Windows Explorer and
browse to a folder, then do a search (search companion) of files, folders,
and subfolders for a "word or phrase in the file," it ALWAYS returns no
results. This happens even when I KNOW there are multiple files (in this
instance aspx files) that have the word in them! Why does not this
important
function work!?

You are not the first to ask this. The question pops up daily.

Since years, the answer is: XYplorer file manager.
Since weeks, there's even a freeware version of XYplorer that does it: Find
files by content. Easy, reliably and fast.

http://www.xyplorer.com/

Don

 

[mayayana]

Since years, the answer is: XYplorer file manager.

Since weeks, there's even a freeware version of XYplorer that does it: Find
files by content. Easy, reliably and fast.

http://www.xyplorer.com/

I just found another free program that's quite a bit faster
and with a more intuitive interface:

http://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack/

I still find it hard to believe, though, that it's come
to this. Microsoft has been focussing on search - both
on and off line - for quite a while, trying to beat out
Google. I'm dumbfounded that XP search is actually
worse than Win98 and Vista search is apparently
worse than both of them! (According to posts I've
seen, Vista can't search inside ANY files unless it's
done in conjunction with indexing.)

I keep waiting for someone to show up and post the
hidden setting required to make XP search work *at least*
as well as Win98.