Vista can not find stuff????????

[I eat vista]

add me to the list of unhappy index users. or FORMER index users. I've

turned off the service.

You did a wise thing...

Wise as in things Vista fanboys are incapable of! lol

 

[Celegans]

I'm inclined to agree. I have found Search in Vista to be very unreliable,
almost useless.

There's a Vista blog about "Advanced search techniques"
http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/pages/advanced-search-techniques.aspx,
but what's "Advanced" about not being able to find some files in Vista that
one could find in Windows 2000, 98 or 95? Oh, I forgot, Vista search is
fast even though it's flawed. Microsoft optimized its search for speed but
didn't care about being correct or complete.

The bottom line is if you work in a multi-platform environment (like Windows
and Linux), or have a variety of scientific or special file formats (some
programs even create files with extensions like .001, .002, .003, ...),
Vista file search is truly worthless since it doesn't look at "unapproved"
file extensions. "Unapproved" file extensions will never be searched or
indexed. Once you find out something isn't searched/indexed you then need
to tell Windows about that file extension so it's indexed/searched. You
have to let each file type fail (assuming you know), and then you tell
Windows about that extension. Then you do this again and again as other
filetypes are discovered (unless you're all knowing, but then you probably
don't need search). This is progress? Many users will think their search
didn't have any hits before they realize the files are really there but
Microsoft's Vista just can't find them.

Windows Vista file search is simply AWFUL, unreliable, and I don't
understand why Microsoft isn't embarrassed enough to fix it. But when has
Microsoft ever been embarrassed by bad software? Microsoft can provide
several ways of doing many things I don't need or want, but it won't give me
one 100% reliable way to do one thing I truly need: file search. I don't
need this every day, but I might as well throw away a lot of old files on my
Vista machine since Vista refuses to search them. The example I gave that
failed was finding an old Bourne shell script (a .sh file) that had the word
"uname" in it -- I had archived this file under Windows. Vista won't
index/search .sh files without some sort of software that knows how to deal
with them. I'm not sure why there isn't an option to treat all other files
as ASCII (or even binary) if they have an unknown extension. Just give me
an option that says "search all files and forget the index". Let me use the
fast search when it makes sense, but give me a way to find ANY FILE on my PC
when I need to.

It's truly unbelievable how hard it is to get Microsoft to listen

C. elegans

 

[Frank]

PS 2 hours later - still no sign of plesiochronous, from Vista Search. Even
Findstr finds it in a few seconds.

I copied "plesiochronous' to my search...nothing on my computer...hit
search the Internet ...live search brought up numerous results within
seconds.
Frank

 

[dennis@home]

I copied "plesiochronous' to my search...nothing on my computer...hit
search the Internet ...live search brought up numerous results within
seconds.
Frank

I pasted "plesiochronous" in my computer and got three hits.. all posts in
this thread.

 

[Guest]

LOL! that's great that it works on your machine. I"ve had to disable it
on mine. Even tried rebuilding the index. no joy. so i run with
indexing service turned off. NOW Vista can find files. It never worked
right, "right out of the box" on a new laptop. updates the past few
months have not fixed it. dont even get me started on all the features
that MS dropped from Vista. and the ones that remain are of dubious
value, at best. this OS is one of the worst they have produced. DOS 4.0,
Windows Me, and now Vista. Good ones: DOS 6.22, XP.

Are you saying I can turn off indexing and go back to normal search (like
XP)? - If so, how do i go about it?

 

[Guest]

I read this in the help menu:


"....Can I turn the Windows search index on or off?

No, the index can't be turned off or paused.

The Windows search index improves the efficiency of your searches by
keeping....."

How did you manage to turn of indexing??

 

[Guest]

Okay, Okay you're ripping on something that you have no idea how it even
works? DUH!

 

[David]

There's a Vista blog about "Advanced search techniques"
http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/pages/advanced-search-techniques.aspx,
but what's "Advanced" about not being able to find some files in Vista that
one could find in Windows 2000, 98 or 95? Oh, I forgot, Vista search is
fast even though it's flawed. Microsoft optimized its search for speed but
didn't care about being correct or complete.

The bottom line is if you work in a multi-platform environment (like Windows
and Linux), or have a variety of scientific or special file formats (some
programs even create files with extensions like .001, .002, .003, ...),
Vista file search is truly worthless since it doesn't look at "unapproved"
file extensions. "Unapproved" file extensions will never be searched or
indexed. Once you find out something isn't searched/indexed you then need
to tell Windows about that file extension so it's indexed/searched. You
have to let each file type fail (assuming you know), and then you tell
Windows about that extension. Then you do this again and again as other
filetypes are discovered (unless you're all knowing, but then you probably
don't need search). This is progress? Many users will think their search
didn't have any hits before they realize the files are really there but
Microsoft's Vista just can't find them.

Windows Vista file search is simply AWFUL, unreliable, and I don't
understand why Microsoft isn't embarrassed enough to fix it. But when has
Microsoft ever been embarrassed by bad software? Microsoft can provide
several ways of doing many things I don't need or want, but it won't give me
one 100% reliable way to do one thing I truly need: file search. I don't
need this every day, but I might as well throw away a lot of old files on my
Vista machine since Vista refuses to search them. The example I gave that
failed was finding an old Bourne shell script (a .sh file) that had the word
"uname" in it -- I had archived this file under Windows. Vista won't
index/search .sh files without some sort of software that knows how to deal
with them. I'm not sure why there isn't an option to treat all other files
as ASCII (or even binary) if they have an unknown extension. Just give me
an option that says "search all files and forget the index". Let me use the
fast search when it makes sense, but give me a way to find ANY FILE on my PC
when I need to.

It's truly unbelievable how hard it is to get Microsoft to listen

C. elegans

You are SO right! I just loaded Google Desktop Search last night
because of the worthlessness of Vista's lame Indexing "service".
"service"! HA! that's a misnomer, eh??

Dave

 

[David]

I read this in the help menu:


"....Can I turn the Windows search index on or off?

No, the index can't be turned off or paused.

The Windows search index improves the efficiency of your searches by
keeping....."

How did you manage to turn of indexing??

heck yes, u can turn off indexing!!!!
just go to services.msc and turn off the service. you'll be a much
happier Vista user, once that worthless "service" is disabled. Now
you'll fnd that explorer can actually find stuff!

and there's always Google Desktop search, but I don't like it that much
because i like large icons in Explorer better than the search results
returned by GDS.

Dave

 

[David]

Okay, Okay you're ripping on something that you have no idea how it even
works? DUH!

and if you think Vista's indexing works correctly than YOU are the one
who has no idea. Vista's search function is NOT ready for prime time,
my friend. We don't need to spend months or years figuring that one out.

Dave