Is Posting Broken as Vista Search?

[Wayne Hartell]

Ok, is this newsgroup running on Vista, because I posted more than an hour
and a half ago, but my post isn't showing, so I'll give it another go... :-(

Anyway, to the point... Windows Search / Indexing. Does it work or not?
Seriously. Tell me this feature isn't horribly broken and show me why.

All I want to do is index some Outlook 2003 e-mail. Most e-mail is in a
*.pst that is accessible within Outlook 2003. I don't want to index files.

I can select the locations no problem, just the indexing doesn't index. If I
select some folders it might index a few hundred items or a few thousand
then it says it's complete, even though this is only a small percentage of
the expected number, and sure enough searching the index for e-mail turns up
hardly any of the expected results.

If I select or change the folders (even empty ones) it seems to kick start
the indexing (sometimes) and it will continue for a bit until it stalls
again. At one point I gave it 4 hours (totally idle) to do the job, and
still no dice. Can I have my four hours back?

After all of that I gave up on just choosing the individual folders I want
indexed so I just selected them ALL and the indexed item count started going
backwards! OMG, how can widening the included locations, reduce the number
of indexed items? Before I knew it I had 7,000 less indexed items than when
I was indexing less folders. All the while the actual contents of the
folders had not changed!

Seriously, I have no other way to describe Vista Search, than horribly
horribly broken and I've been sitting messing with it for something like 12
hours and I'm very very frustrated. Furthermore, it's not like I'm new to
software or computers. I could understand my mother saying something was
broken when it isn't because she thinks that just because I have 2 screens I
must have two computers, but after more than 25 years using computers and
more than 12 working in software design and development I'd like to think I
have a little bit more of a handle on things. I can handle working on
multi-tier, multi-language, multi-threaded, multi-technology applications
and getting everything to work, but somehow I just can't work out Windows
Search.

Regards,
Wayne.

ps/ Indexing just finished again. "Indexing complete." it says. 5,641 items
indexed. That's only about 37,000 less than it should be. Test search for an
e-mail at random. No hits. Vista search sucks. Arrrggggghhh! X1 here I come.

 

[Mr. Arnold]

ps/ Indexing just finished again. "Indexing complete." it says. 5,641
items indexed. That's only about 37,000 less than it should be. Test
search for an e-mail at random. No hits. Vista search sucks. Arrrggggghhh!
X1 here I come.

If you want to use Vista Search, the use the Adv Search and use the *Include
non indexed and system files*, and it will find any file or files you're
looking for. Once I discovered that, then I have never had another problem
with Vista Search finding anything, where previously the Search wasn't
finding any thing I was looking for, because I don't know how to use the
search, and I was calling it a piece of junk.

BTW, I am a programmer too and have done all the things you have done. Vista
is not that hard, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out.

 

[Mr. Arnold]

<snipped>

Oh, and one other thing, depending upon what word or words you might have in
a post, the post might get rejected, because they are being scanned.

 

[Wayne Hartell]

Hi Arnold,

Thanks for the reply, but...

A. I'm not talking about searching for files.
B. I only want to search indexed results (that's the point in wanting to
have them indexed). I do not want to include non-indexed anything because
it's slow.

So, it's not that hard eh? I beg to differ. It's either totally convoluted
or totally broken. (I'm talking about the search/indexing, not Vista in
general, yet).

This morning I have awoken 8 hours later to find it has indexed only 178
e-mails out of something like 43,000. I deliberately disabled all
sleep/power saving, screen saver and virus scanning so it could have no
excuses for not indexing, so why didn't it index?

I never said the UI was hard to use. I'm not someone who will get on to a
newsgroup if I can't work it out after 5 minutes, I took more or less all of
yesterday and read just about everything I could find on it, yet this still
doesn't work. This is horribly broken, IMO.

When I can figure out why my wireless adapter isn't showing up as an
available network adapter for my virtual machines (like it did under XP in
VPC 2007), I'll upload an image of the Indexing options dialog that clearly
shows the locations being indexed, that indexing is "complete" and the count
of items that is unbelievably incorrect.

I can't believe I am the only person to have tried indexing Outlook 2003 on
Vista??

Regards,
Wayne.

 

[Wayne Hartell]

Figured out the VPC thing. No problem.

So here's the screen shot of the indexing mystery.
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~sj.hartell/images/VistaIndexing.jpg

Approximately 43,000 e-mail (more than 41,000 in the archive *.pst alone),
yet Vista search seems happy that it indexed just 178 items, and that's
after letting it sit all night, quite literally. Just how long would I have
to wait for it to index all my e-mail?

:-(

 

[Wayne Hartell]

Just English words. The content of my posting would have been suitable for
general exhibition unless capitalized terms are banned? (Terms like "raid0",
"empty" and "arrrghh" was as explicit as my posting got.)

Still no sign of it. Lost in silicon heaven I suppose.

At least you did read that part of my post.

Does my link with image help clarify the problem?

 

[Mr. Arnold]

Just English words. The content of my posting would have been suitable for
general exhibition unless capitalized terms are banned? (Terms like
"raid0", "empty" and "arrrghh" was as explicit as my posting got.)

Still no sign of it. Lost in silicon heaven I suppose.

At least you did read that part of my post.

Does my link with image help clarify the problem?

You got the post save in the sent folder. I suggest you send it again and
see if it shows. This post showed. See what happens with the others that
didn't make it when you send it again.

 

[Mr. Arnold]

Figured out the VPC thing. No problem.

So here's the screen shot of the indexing mystery.
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~sj.hartell/images/VistaIndexing.jpg

Approximately 43,000 e-mail (more than 41,000 in the archive *.pst alone),
yet Vista search seems happy that it indexed just 178 items, and that's
after letting it sit all night, quite literally. Just how long would I
have to wait for it to index all my e-mail?

:-(

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932989

The second thing you might want to do is stop/start the Indexing service in
the hopes that it will refresh the index after you do the Rebuild.

 

[Wayne Hartell]

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932989

The second thing you might want to do is stop/start the Indexing service
in the hopes that it will refresh the index after you do the Rebuild.

Thanks for the help, but again this has *nothing* do do with *files*. Do you
understand that?

I also tried rebooting, which would also result in a service restart. Put
plainly the indexing doesn't work properly.

Thanks for trying though.

 

[Wayne Hartell]

You got the post save in the sent folder. I suggest you send it again and
see if it shows. This post showed. See what happens with the others that
didn't make it when you send it again.

There's no point in sending the original again since it's just a different
version of my first.

Either way, I've turned off the indexing now (Windows Search service) and am
going to use X1 and move on. If anyone figures out how to use this to index
Outlook 2003 e-mail successfully (not files; I'm not talking about files)
then perhaps they'll be kind enough to post.

Regards,
Wayne.