search doesn't work

[Denise]

Hi folks,

I have a perplexing problem. I'm running Win XP Media Center Edition.

Search doesn't work. Sometimes it finds what I'm looking for with no
problem. But most of the time it doesn't.

There's no error message or anything. It either doesn't turn up any results,
or it only turns up a few, even when I know there are at least one, and
often many files that match the search.

For instance, I have a lot of subfolders & files in My Documents. I know one
of the files, a .html document, has the phrase "bow tie" in it - I just
wrote it a few days ago. Today, I searched for bow tie in My Documents, and
XP came up empty.

And it came up empty darn fast - within 2 seconds after I hit the "search
button."

I have it set so subfolders & hidden files are searched (though this
particular file isn't hidden), and I didn't specify a particular size or
modified date. Still, it comes up with no results.

This happens more often than not when I search for files (usually text
files, html documents or photos), to such an extent that I've considered
installing a 3rd party search application. But I would rather use XP's own
search function.

Any suggestions would be most welcome. I'm pretty tech savvy but the
solution to this sure eludes me.

Thanks for your help.

all best,
Denise

 

[Alan]

Hello Denise,

Ever since it was released, XP's search feature was not one its stronger
features. When I first got an XP machine 5 years ago, I wrote in this
newsgroup about how poor it was. (I was definitely not the only one who
voiced complaints.)

Anyway, someone told me to download and install a free software program
called Agent Ransack to handle searches.

I did, and I still continue to use it. It's available at
http://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack/download.aspx.

Alan

 

[Denise]

Hi Alan,

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll consider downloading another application,
but would really like to know how to fix XP's search function.

I had a computer with XP (SP2) up until last December, and the search worked
just fine on it.

It's just with this new machine (running XP Media Center Edition) that I'm
experiencing difficulty, and it seems that there must be a setting or
something that could be adjusted. It doesn't seem search would vary much
between 2 editions of XP.

Thanks again for your suggestion. I'll check it out. In the meantime, does
anyone have a suggestion as to how to adjust XP's search function so it
returns all the results?

all best,
Denise

 

[Rock]

Hi folks,

I have a perplexing problem. I'm running Win XP Media Center Edition.

Search doesn't work. Sometimes it finds what I'm looking for with no
problem. But most of the time it doesn't.

There's no error message or anything. It either doesn't turn up any
results, or it only turns up a few, even when I know there are at least
one, and often many files that match the search.

For instance, I have a lot of subfolders & files in My Documents. I know
one of the files, a .html document, has the phrase "bow tie" in it - I
just wrote it a few days ago. Today, I searched for bow tie in My
Documents, and XP came up empty.

And it came up empty darn fast - within 2 seconds after I hit the "search
button."

I have it set so subfolders & hidden files are searched (though this
particular file isn't hidden), and I didn't specify a particular size or
modified date. Still, it comes up with no results.

This happens more often than not when I search for files (usually text
files, html documents or photos), to such an extent that I've considered
installing a 3rd party search application. But I would rather use XP's own
search function.

Any suggestions would be most welcome. I'm pretty tech savvy but the
solution to this sure eludes me.

Thanks for your help.

XP's search feature will look for text only in files that have certain file
extensions. You can modify the registry to add persistent handlers for
specific additional file extensions. See this article.

Using the "A word or phrase in the file" search criterion may not work
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309173/EN-US/

The other work around, as another poster recommended, is to use the
excellent and free search tool, Agent Ransack.
http://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack/

 

[Denise]

Hi Rock,

Thanks for the Microsoft link.

95% of my searches are for garden variety .jpg, .gif & .psd images, and
..html & .txt files; which unfortunately aren't on that list of excluded file
types. But, as the article suggested I did turn on the "Index file types
with unknown extensions" option just in case it would make a difference.

My computer is up to date. So, I don't know what else to do. Indexing
appears to be running, but it's apparently not finding newly-created files.

Thanks!

all best,
Denise