Vista Search woes

[Joe Grover]

I've been using Vista for about a year now on my machine at work, and while
I've never had any technical problems, there is one thing that I simply am
unable to overcome, and it's the reason I never boot into my Vista partition
at home, and that's the Search feature. I'm hoping someone can help me out
with this.

In previous versions of Windows, I could tell the Search tool to look only
ro Excel documents (*.xls) for any occurrance of a particular string (like a
hardware MAC address or a phone number). This was quick and efficient.

In Vista, I can only type in the string I want it to find, and it will
search everything. It isn't that this takes an abnormal amount of time, my
problem is that it isn't finding what I'm looking for every time. Here's a
recent example:

I'm a network administrator, and am in the process of deploying a new file
server at a regional office. The old server name is for example CORP-FP1,
and the new one is CORP-LAN-FP1.

I open up our netlogon share (\\domain\netlogon) to view all the logon
scripts. In XP I could search *.bat for CORP-FP1 and get a list of all of
the logon scripts that have a reference to that server. If I enter CORP-FP1
into the Search box in Vista I get 6 results--unfortunately there are
actually 32 files in that folder that contain this string. If I go to the
domain controller itself (Windows Server 2003), open up \\domain\netlogon,
copy the scripts into a folder on the desktop and then use the 2003 search
tool to look for CORP-FP1 all the logon scripts and batch commands are
displayed.

What are my options? I have no problems with Vista whatsoever except for
this Search tool, which I'm sure has all kinds of nice things over older
versions, but it seems to me there is a great deal lost in it as well. Any
suggestions are appreciated.

Joe

 

[DaveD]

I agree. Vista search is unbelievably awful.
They went from a fairly intuitive utility in XP (OK, even XP search had its
quirks) to a baroque, semi-functional TEXT-BASED (hello 1984) search
interface in Vista.
I turned the indexing off and downloaded FileSeek. It does everything I
want, plus has a context-menu option.

PS - Second on my Vista 'what the hell were they thinking' list is the Help
function. No more context help, just reams of prose that may or may not have
anything to do with what you're trying to figure out at the time.

If MS could see fit to fix those two glaring mistakes, plus fix the bugs, I
could recommend Vista. As it is, I consider it a failed experiment in change
for change's sake.
(I turned off the UAC within the first 10 minutes of installing, so that's
no on my list. Also I wrote my own backup using the XCOPY command. Otherwise
the pathetic backup would be on my list too)

DD

 

[Retroman]

snip
In previous versions of Windows, I could tell the Search tool to look only
ro Excel documents (*.xls) for any occurrance of a particular string (like a
hardware MAC address or a phone number). This was quick and efficient.

In Vista, I can only type in the string I want it to find, and it will
search everything.

Just type ext:xls and then the text string. Once you learn the new
syntax, you can limit the search very easily.

snip
I open up our netlogon share (\\domain\netlogon) to view all the logon
scripts. In XP I could search *.bat for CORP-FP1 and get a list of all of
the logon scripts that have a reference to that server. If I enter CORP-FP1
into the Search box in Vista I get 6 results--unfortunately there are
actually 32 files in that folder that contain this string. If I go to the
domain controller itself (Windows Server 2003), open up \\domain\netlogon,
copy the scripts into a folder on the desktop and then use the 2003 search
tool to look for CORP-FP1 all the logon scripts and batch commands are
displayed.

What are my options?

I'm not clear on exactly what you are looking for, but try

ext:bat *CORP-FP1

with content searching for .bat files enabled in indexing options.

The links below explain the new search syntax, among other things:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/desktopsearch/technicalresources/advquery.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/desktopsearch/technicalresources/filetypes.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/desktopsearch/choose/tipsandtricks.mspx
http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/windows/en-us/help/9f592ee9-b397-46d6-a607-47bdab5529ec1033.mspx
http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/Help/e49c345a-cf3d-4298-8614-fde32a76426d1033.mspx
http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/Help/1a6626fa-3cc7-45b4-a973-cc96373dc0d51033.mspx

Doug M. in NJ

 

[Tyro]

Sounds like you have Vista search set up to search everything instead of
just indexed files. Searching for *.xls is very fast on my machine.

Tyro

 

[+Bob+]

I agree. Vista search is unbelievably awful.
They went from a fairly intuitive utility in XP (OK, even XP search had its
quirks) to a baroque, semi-functional TEXT-BASED (hello 1984) search
interface in Vista.
I turned the indexing off and downloaded FileSeek. It does everything I
want, plus has a context-menu option.

Agreed. My choice is "Agent Ransack" :
http://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack/

Shut off Windows Search in services. Be done with that worthless
interface.

PS - Second on my Vista 'what the hell were they thinking' list

I'm gonna trim your post right there... too much time to list all
that's wrong with Vista and all the features they removed.

I've yet to get any of the fan boys here to tell me what
"enhancements" are in Vista - although they always claim there are
many.

 

[+Bob+]

I'm not clear on exactly what you are looking for, but try

ext:bat *CORP-FP1

with content searching for .bat files enabled in indexing options.

The links below explain the new search syntax, among other things:

So intuitive... how could he have missed it?