Windows search and offlines folders

D

Duschnouk

I recently installed 3 Dell laptop (E4300) shipped with Vista Pro 32 bits
french.

In order to take advantage of the vista's new features over XP (these
laptops are the first using vista, as my institute IT departement is only
supporting xp for the moment) I configured them in order to use the offline
files feature and indexing them - with all these data (offline files and
index file) being encrypted using the built-in tpm chip.

And despite these machines being with the last updates of Dell and Windows,
the vista search in offline folders do not work correctly (I have of course
activated the "index encrypted files" option, my index is inside an
encrypted folder and the offline files encryption option is set on).

After googling a little bit, I found this old thread of this newsgroup
explaining how to enable the search in offline folders by forcing the search
engine to crawl the %windir%\csc folder
(http://www.vistax64.com/vista-general/60536-offline-files-not-indexed.html
- see main excerpts hereunder) .

I finally managed to do it on one laptop - not without having caused a blue
screen error forcing me to switch back to a previous saved configuration
after I rebooted after having forced the CSC folder to be under my ownership
(-but that's another story-).

So the result is that now I can do my search even in my offline folders, but
only if I do it from the main search menu - if I try to narrow the search
from a folder of my offline folders (either by its drive letter or by the
//server/folder name address) it only execute a file name search (so no
index search) if I do it from "//server/folder name" and nothing at all (!!)
if I do it from "mapped drive letter:\folder name".
What is more weird is that sometime if I force and force, after a while the
index search works on "//server/folder name" but never on "mapped driver
letter:\folder name". It seems for that last one that this location is
deemed as being indexed but retrieve nothing unless I use the "advanced
search" to force a search by file name (so I have the hunch that somewhere
the system know that this network drive is indexed but it cannot retrieve
the data - as otherwise I will have a notice stating that this is a non
indexed area).

So my question is why a so basic bug reported since May 2007 has not been
fixed yet? As other competitive products do this without a pain. This is
very annoying as this is undoubtedly a very powerful productivity tool but
it just doesn't work unless you pass hours to fine-tune trivial settings
which should not have to be modified and which at the end do not work
properly.

Thanks for your response and help.

---

copy of the responses previously given in this newsgroup:
***
(1/4) - Original question - date: 1st May 2007

Title: Offline Files not indexed?

I have a mapped drive to a server (H). I have taken the entire H drive
'offline'. All files are fine and available. However, when I open the H
drive and then search for files, no results are returned until I select
Advanced Search and then check to 'Include non-indexed, hidden, and system
files (might be slow)'.

When I do this, the search is performed fine.

In Indexing Options, I have verified that Offline Files is included.

Any ideas?

Richard Perry

***
(2/4) - 1st official response

Hello,

I tested your problem, but I couldn't reproduce it. In my environment, the
offline files are indexed by default and can be searched without locate to
the offline files folder. Regarding my test, after set a share available
offline, the content of the share is stored in the %windir%\CSC folder and
it's indexed by default.

Please refer to the following steps to reset offline folders:
1. Take owner ship of the %windir%\CSC
2. Set permission for the logon account
3. Remove/move all the content in the csc folder
4. Check/set the properties of the folder: General->Adanvced->"For fast
searching, allow Indexing Service to index this folder"
5. Make share offline again and test the problem

I hope the steps could help you resolve your issue.

Best Regards,

Sean Cai, MCSE2000
Microsoft Online Support
***
(3/4) (2nd and last official response)
***
Re: Offline Files not indexed?
Hello Richard,

I didn't expect a long term test last time, so I've removed the original
test environment. However, the new test environment has been established
and I think I reproduced your problem.

Please try the following steps to fix your problem:
1. Start Indexing Options
2. Click Modify
3. Navigate to the %windir%\CSC folder and choose it
4. Click Ok
Depends on the offline files' quantity, it may take a few minutes to index
every offline files. After indexing is done, you should be able to search
offline files with index.

Based on my experience in Windows XP, offline files won't be modified
automatically, but I'll keep an eye on my test environment in the next a
few days. If anything changes, I'll check it out and discuss with you.

Thanks & Regards,

Sean Cai, MCSE2000
Microsoft Online Support

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=====================================================
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=====================================================
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***
(4/4) Recent post (15th March 2008) of someone having the same trouble
***
Re: Offline Files not indexed?

I'm running Vista Ultimate x86 SP1. I have been having the same issue
for several months and hoped SP1 would have corrected the problem.
However the problem still persists and I've tried rebuilding the index
and resetting the indexing options.
 
R

Retroman

I recently installed 3 Dell laptop (E4300) shipped with Vista Pro 32 bits
french.

In order to take advantage of the vista's new features over XP (these
laptops are the first using vista, as my institute IT departement is only
supporting xp for the moment) I configured them in order to use the offline
files feature and indexing them - with all these data (offline files and
index file) being encrypted using the built-in tpm chip.

And despite these machines being with the last updates of Dell and Windows,
the vista search in offline folders do not work correctly (I have of course
activated the "index encrypted files" option, my index is inside an
encrypted folder and the offline files encryption option is set on).

After googling a little bit, I found this old thread of this newsgroup
explaining how to enable the search in offline folders by forcing the search
engine to crawl the %windir%\csc folder
(http://www.vistax64.com/vista-general/60536-offline-files-not-indexed.html
- see main excerpts hereunder) .

I finally managed to do it on one laptop - not without having caused a blue
screen error forcing me to switch back to a previous saved configuration
after I rebooted after having forced the CSC folder to be under my ownership
(-but that's another story-).

So the result is that now I can do my search even in my offline folders, but
only if I do it from the main search menu - if I try to narrow the search
from a folder of my offline folders (either by its drive letter or by the
//server/folder name address) it only execute a file name search (so no
index search) if I do it from "//server/folder name" and nothing at all (!!)
if I do it from "mapped drive letter:\folder name".
What is more weird is that sometime if I force and force, after a while the
index search works on "//server/folder name" but never on "mapped driver
letter:\folder name". It seems for that last one that this location is
deemed as being indexed but retrieve nothing unless I use the "advanced
search" to force a search by file name (so I have the hunch that somewhere
the system know that this network drive is indexed but it cannot retrieve
the data - as otherwise I will have a notice stating that this is a non
indexed area).

So my question is why a so basic bug reported since May 2007 has not been
fixed yet? As other competitive products do this without a pain. This is
very annoying as this is undoubtedly a very powerful productivity tool but
it just doesn't work unless you pass hours to fine-tune trivial settings
which should not have to be modified and which at the end do not work
properly.

Bonjour Duschnouk,

The threads you reference refer to version 3 of Windows Desktop Search
(WDS 3). First, make sure that you are running Vista SP1 and WDS 4. Go
to Control Panel|Programs & Features|Installed Updates and verify that
"Windows Search 4.0" is shown.

If not, download and install the update. If it is installed, search the
MS WDS forum for "offline files" for setup tips. There are a number of
discussions about them, but ignore any threads about WDS 3:

http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=847&SiteID=1

If you still have problems, post your question in that forum. The MS
developers monitor it and are very helpful.

Doug M. in NJ
 

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