Some Search Bugs

[Bob]

Hi Guys

I have a problem that still exists after I received the SP3 for XP.
I still cannot search for every file and folder. there are few issues that I
could not fix by myself yet

1- go to your windows host drive (the drive that you installed windows)
search for explorer.exe. After a few seconds or minutes or may be days it
will say "Search is complete. There is no result to display". Now goto
windows folder and type e, x, p and you are on it, the explorer.exe file. Now
go back to root folder and try searching "msmsgs.exe" same answer now go to
"\Program Files\Messenger" folder, thats it second file in list!

I want to force search to look in every folder including system folders like
windows and "program files"

I even tried to delete desktop.ini files from these folders but still no
success.

searchin every folder is usefull when you are searching for a virus running
in memory and you can see it in taskmanager and when you search for it you
cannot find it except if you search each folder sepratly that it isvery time
consuming process.

The second problem is with "Look in" combo box that is not containing full
path to search folder so you cannot include many selected drives like what
was available in windows 2000, I could search drive C and D together using
folder name like this C:,D: (i'm not sure may be C:;D: ) but it is not
available anymore

The other problem is the name on Search folder combo box is not path anymore
so I cannot copy the search folder name from there. As an example if you are
searching D:\Documents\Media it only shows Media and if you have Media Folder
in many Media folder like "C:\Document\1\Media", "C:\Document\2\Media",
"C:\Document\3\Media", ... you will not know which one you was searching from
the search box

fortunatly I managed to get ride of the dog and stupid new search dialog
that was showing all files as thumbnails.

Thanks
Bob

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I have a problem that still exists after I received the SP3 for XP.
I still cannot search for every file and folder. there are few
issues that I could not fix by myself yet

1- go to your windows host drive (the drive that you installed
windows) search for explorer.exe. After a few seconds or minutes or
may be days it will say "Search is complete. There is no result to
display". Now goto windows folder and type e, x, p and you are on
it, the explorer.exe file. Now go back to root folder and try
searching "msmsgs.exe" same answer now go to "\Program
Files\Messenger" folder, thats it second file in list!

I want to force search to look in every folder including system
folders like windows and "program files"

I even tried to delete desktop.ini files from these folders but
still no success.

searchin every folder is usefull when you are searching for a virus
running in memory and you can see it in taskmanager and when you
search for it you cannot find it except if you search each folder
sepratly that it isvery time consuming process.

Search Options --> Advanced Options --> Search system folders, Search hidden
files, Search Subfolders are all checked?

The second problem is with "Look in" combo box that is not
containing full path to search folder so you cannot include many
selected drives like what was available in windows 2000, I could
search drive C and D together using folder name like this C:,D:
(i'm not sure may be C:;D: ) but it is not available anymore

The other problem is the name on Search folder combo box is not
path anymore so I cannot copy the search folder name from there. As
an example if you are searching D:\Documents\Media it only shows
Media and if you have Media Folder in many Media folder like
"C:\Document\1\Media", "C:\Document\2\Media",
"C:\Document\3\Media", ... you will not know which one you was
searching from the search box

fortunatly I managed to get ride of the dog and stupid new search
dialog that was showing all files as thumbnails.

Truly - it sounds like you have some other issue. Are you sure all you did
was install SP3? I just tried it on 3 very differently configured systems
that I recentlhy updated to SP3 - none of them had the issues you are
reporting. :-(

 

[Bob]

Actually this is not an issue of SP3 it was exist from first days of windows XP
- yes the options checked and I can see the hidden and system files too.
- I'm not using Indexing server that consumes about 5Gigs of my Hard space
and also makes finding an small file in a folder of 1500 files slower than
finding it manually.

I also unregistered dll's for the Search dog and new blue look with lot of
useless options and it not look like windows 2000 search box that I missed it
a lot.

from your answer I understand that you can search windows host drive and see
the files inside the program files folder and windows folder in your test
result, am I right?

Bob

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I have a problem that still exists after I received the SP3 for XP.
I still cannot search for every file and folder. there are few
issues that I could not fix by myself yet

1- go to your windows host drive (the drive that you installed
windows) search for explorer.exe. After a few seconds or minutes or
may be days it will say "Search is complete. There is no result to
display". Now goto windows folder and type e, x, p and you are on
it, the explorer.exe file. Now go back to root folder and try
searching "msmsgs.exe" same answer now go to "\Program
Files\Messenger" folder, thats it second file in list!

I want to force search to look in every folder including system
folders like windows and "program files"

I even tried to delete desktop.ini files from these folders but
still no success.

searchin every folder is usefull when you are searching for a virus
running in memory and you can see it in taskmanager and when you
search for it you cannot find it except if you search each folder
sepratly that it isvery time consuming process.

The second problem is with "Look in" combo box that is not
containing full path to search folder so you cannot include many
selected drives like what was available in windows 2000, I could
search drive C and D together using folder name like this C:,D:
(i'm not sure may be C:;D: ) but it is not available anymore

The other problem is the name on Search folder combo box is not
path anymore so I cannot copy the search folder name from there. As
an example if you are searching D:\Documents\Media it only shows
Media and if you have Media Folder in many Media folder like
"C:\Document\1\Media", "C:\Document\2\Media",
"C:\Document\3\Media", ... you will not know which one you was
searching from the search box

fortunatly I managed to get ride of the dog and stupid new search
dialog that was showing all files as thumbnails.

Search Options --> Advanced Options --> Search system folders,
Search hidden files, Search Subfolders are all checked?

Truly - it sounds like you have some other issue. Are you sure all
you did was install SP3? I just tried it on 3 very differently
configured systems that I recentlhy updated to SP3 - none of them
had the issues you are reporting. :-(

Actually this is not an issue of SP3 it was exist from first days
of windows XP
- yes the options checked and I can see the hidden and system files
too.
- I'm not using Indexing server that consumes about 5Gigs of my
Hard space and also makes finding an small file in a folder of 1500
files slower than finding it manually.

I also unregistered dll's for the Search dog and new blue look with
lot of useless options and it not look like windows 2000 search box
that I missed it a lot.

from your answer I understand that you can search windows host
drive and see the files inside the program files folder and windows
folder in your test result, am I right?

I did this:

1- go to your windows host drive (the drive that you installed
windows) search for explorer.exe. After a few seconds or minutes or
may be days it will say "Search is complete. There is no result to
display". Now goto windows folder and type e, x, p and you are on
it, the explorer.exe file.

<snipped>

Except that my search for 'explorer.exe' on the system I am using resulted
in several matches.

- C:\WINDOWS
- C:\WINDOWS\$NtUninstallKB938828$
- C:\WINDOWS\Prefetch
- C:\WINDOWS\system32\dllcache
- C:\WINDOWS\$hf_mig$\KB938828\SP2QFE

I stopped it there - that was less than 2 minutes into the search (Pentium
1.8GHz, 768MB memory). I also turned off indexing long ago. I am unsure
why you would have unregistered DLLs to get rid of the dog/etc - that's
easily done without touching the registry/any files. It is - in fact -
options available to be turned off/on. If you unregistered DLLs - you may
have broken your search.

This is my search for explorer.exe:
http://picasaweb.google.com/newshelper/WindowsSearchSimplifiedInterface/photo#5200441491329093970

This is how my Search looks in Windows XP:
http://picasaweb.google.com/newshelper/WindowsSearchSimplifiedInterface/photo#5200440396112433474

Not sure if having the 'worthless options' you see there bothers me. ;-)

 

[Bob]

Hi Shenan

Many Thanks, I had so much pain searching for files inside Windows folder,
specially when you are writing a service application and you need to delete
it from system32 folder each time you change it.

I created a registry patch to set these default settings for search,
now I have a few more questions.

How you disabled that blue look of search in XP without unregistring the
dll's?
is it possible to have search options closed and still they are effective
(like what we had in win2k)?

Here I have a picture of what I mean the red arrows show what should change
to blue one
http://picasaweb.google.com/bsarmady/SearchIssue/photo#5202689202259967714

Many Thanks
Bob



and do you have a solution for folder name that shortening in title bar and
also search folder box?

 

[Shenan Stanley]

Many Thanks, I had so much pain searching for files inside Windows
folder, specially when you are writing a service application and
you need to delete it from system32 folder each time you change it.

I created a registry patch to set these default settings for search,
now I have a few more questions.

How you disabled that blue look of search in XP without
unregistring the dll's?

You can use TweakUI...
http://www.petri.co.il/restore_classic_search_in_windows_xp.htm

Which does a registry entry...
http://www.pctools.com/guides/registry/detail/1067/

No unregistering of dlls.. ;-)

is it possible to have search options closed and still they are
effective (like what we had in win2k)?

Here I have a picture of what I mean the red arrows show what
should change to blue one
http://picasaweb.google.com/bsarmady/SearchIssue/photo#5202689202259967714

Unsure - I have not used Windows 2000 in 5 years. I'll have to bring up a
virtual machine. Do you mean a pure search window?

Start button --> search...

 

[Bob]

Thanks Shenan

You answered all my questions, and saved a huge time for me

Bob