Thanks but that does no seem to work for me, I'm not sure what I am doing
wrong but
very few results come up.
I have C: drive indexed??
cheers
Daniel
It doesn't matter if you drive is indexed or not. That only impacts
how long the search takes. Vista is capable of doing various searches.
What was referred to above is new to Vista. If you click on the Start
button Orb begin to type WHAT you are searching for in the space
provided and almost instantly Vista will begin to generate a clickable
list of files and programs plus what is in your History and Favorites
folders to make it easy to quickly get back to some of sites you found
interesting. This is NOT an all inclusive list.
Next is quick searching of any folder. This is useful if you know what
you are looking for is in a particular folder or one of it's sub
folders. Just open Windows Explorer, at the top far right enter what
you are searching for IN THIS FOLDER and a list of "hits" will get
generated.
After if you haven't found what you want, at the bottom of this
generated list is the link to advanced searches and an option to look
within files. Both are slow and a little confusing to understand until
you use it a few times.
With advanced search you can both expand your searches to look in more
places including up to your entire system regardless where files are
or be more restrictive and only look at certain kinds of files.
Two common stumbling blocks:
#1 First, by default Advance Search only looks in indexed locations.
Again by default these are limited to where Windows expects you
to put your files. In my opinion a stupid design flaw because
Windows expects you to put your data files on the root drive in
specific folders like pictures or documents. Since many people
these days have multiple large drives they use for their data
this is kind of dumb design, but it can be changed.
#2 When you go to Advanced Search at the very top you see the location
box which you need to customize. To search your entire computer,
change to either Everywhere or Computer. Either should force Vista
to look system wide. The flaw in design (in my opinion) is making
the default action backwards. Instead of looking Everywhere or on
your entire Computer as the location selection you just made
suggests Vista still only looks in indexed locations UNLESS you
now check the box where it says 'include non indexed, system and
hidden files". Only then will it truly look everywhere.
The good or bad option depending on how often and how extensive you
need to search your computer depends on what you include in forced
indexed locations and how many files you have. I have over a million!
Click on Search Tools. Note you now have a option to modify what
folders automatically get indexed if you select modify index
locations.
The trick here is to take some time to think how your organize your
files. If you're smart you should already have some system for
sorting. The more files you have the more critical this becomes.
One approach if you have the hard drive space is just create a master
folder for ALL your data and add as many sub folders as your like to
further sub divide your stuff. Now add this folder to your indexed
locations and every time you do any advanced search in the future
Vista will only scan this folder (plus other defaults) skipping over
all the system files, all the junk Windows collects and stuff outside
this folder. With this method searching should be reasonably fast and
include everything you would normally search for.
As you would expect searching within files for specific words or
phrases can be painstakingly slow.
