WinXP SP2 "Search" can't see local file content

[Guest]

Hi!
Using WindowsExplorer (not InternetExplorer) in WinXP SP2,
I'm trying to find all files in a directory tree that have
one particular word ("Mouse") inside the file.

It's easy to do in Win9x, and I do it all the time at work
in Win2000, but WinXP says there are NO files in that directory
with that word inside them.

But I can open up ONE file right in the directory the search
starts in and see NINE occurrences of that word!

So, why can't Search find that file?

I've set it to look in System and Hidden files (even though
this file is neither). It is set to NOT case sensitive.
Even if I tell Search to look ONLY in that file (by giving
it the filename), it still can't see the word "Mouse" in
that file.

Help, please!

Mike
zzbroida
charter
net

 

[David Candy]

What file. Who made it. Did you ask the manufacturer of that product why they don't supply a search filter?

 

[Guest]

Using WindowsExplorer (not InternetExplorer) in WinXP SP2,
I'm trying to find all files in a directory tree that have
one particular word ("Mouse") inside the file.

But I can open up ONE file right in the directory the search
starts in and see NINE occurrences of that word!

So, why can't Search find that file?

I've set it to look in System and Hidden files (even though
this file is neither). It is set to NOT case sensitive.
Even if I tell Search to look ONLY in that file (by giving
it the filename), it still can't see the word "Mouse" in
that file.

I found PART of the problem. Stupid WindowsExplorer ignores
my direction to search "All Files and Folders". The filenames
end in ".con", so it ignores them. Changing the file itself
to ".txt" (an unacceptable solution) makes the search work.

Why won't the damn tool do what I explicitly TOLD it to do?
<grumble, mumble, rant>
And why did MS -break- it??? It worked BEFORE WinXP!

Mike
zzbroida
charter
net

 

[Guest]

What file. Who made it. Did you ask the manufacturer of that product why they don't supply a search filter?

No "search filter" is required to search a file for
a particular string. Just open the file, read in
the contents, and compare the bytes for the string
I told it to look for.

It's a TEXT file, though it's name ends in ".con".
It's the same as a ".ini" file for other programs,
but that's irrelevant.

And that makes absolutely NO difference. I told it
to search ALL files/folders for that string. It should
search even non-text files.

Simple. Even DOS and Win3.1 and all Win9x and WinNT
and Win2K can do it. Any Unix system can do it; see
"grep" or any of a dozen other tools.

But it looks to me like MS broke WinXP so it won't
do it. How dumb.

Mike

 

[David Candy]

It's not broken. It's nothing to do with MS. It's to do with the manufacturer of that product you are using not suppling a search filter.

 

[Tom]

I found PART of the problem. Stupid WindowsExplorer ignores
my direction to search "All Files and Folders". The filenames
end in ".con", so it ignores them. Changing the file itself
to ".txt" (an unacceptable solution) makes the search work.

Why won't the damn tool do what I explicitly TOLD it to do?
<grumble, mumble, rant>
And why did MS -break- it??? It worked BEFORE WinXP!

Mike
zzbroida
charter
net

Download this:
http://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack/pageloader.aspx?page=download

And get the results you had with the previous versions of Windows you
mentioned. MS broke what a great search feature in 98/ME/2000was, as
compared to what now is in XP.

 

[David Candy]

Stop your lying. It is not broken. It is a smart searcher rather than a stupid string searcher.

Try searching for MZ on 98 and look at the irrelevent hits. Now do the same for XP. Note most of the irrelevent hits are no longer there. If you don't understand something then don't comment on it.

And just a small note 98, 95, 2000, ME, NT4 does NOT search for all text. So you are wrong on that too.

 

[David Candy]

It's not broken. It's working as designed. Whoever made the con file should have supplied a search filterr or set con to use the text filter. How the hell would windows know that it's a text file.

But as you think it's broken I can't help you. If you were to recant and apologise?

 

[Guest]

It's not broken. It's working as designed. Whoever made the con file should have
supplied a search filterr or set con to use the text filter. How the hell would
windows know that it's a text file.

Why should Windows --CARE- that it's a text file?

I told it to search ALL files; that's one of the selections
it allowed me to select. It did not do what I ordered it to
do. It's broken.

But as you think it's broken I can't help you. If you were to recant and apologise?

Recant? Apologise for wanting it to do what it says
it will do? Microsoft should apologize to ME!

Mike

 

[Guest]

It's not broken. It's nothing to do with MS. It's to do with the manufacturer of that product
you are using not suppling a search filter.

The "Product" I'm using is Windows XP.

I want to search my disk for files containing the
word "Mouse".

But MICROSOFT has broken the Search feature in WindowsXP
so it won't look in ALL the files even when I tell it
to look in ALL the files.

Mike

 

[David Candy]

Well don't search it then.

 

[David Candy]

con, being an unknown file is only searched for it's properties. As I said it's smart searching and you haven't provided a filter for your file type. XP searches content. It needs to know what the content is.

It is not a XP thing. XP doesn't use the con file type.

 

[Guest]

con, being an unknown file is only searched for it's properties. As I said it's
smart searching and you haven't provided a filter for your file type.

I don't want smart searching. I want nice dumb byte searches.
Where's the option to enable that?? Or should I say "re-enable"
since it has been in EVERY past version of Windows.

XP searches content.

But it's NOT searching the content. It's ignoring the content.

It is not a XP thing. XP doesn't use the con file type.

XP allows the file to exist. I want XP to show me what's IN
the file. I can see it with Notepad or Wordpad (and a dozen
other non-MS tools), but the "Smart" search is too "Stupid"
to see the content.

MS just keeps getting worse and worse....

Mike

 

[David Candy]

As I said, if you keep insisting it's broken I can't help you. How can it know the content. The manufacturer of that file type didn't supply a filter to extract the content or use an existing system supplied filter (text, properties, mime, html, and office documents).

Perhaps you should use 98 as XP seems beyond you.

 

[Guest]

How can it know the content.

??? It can LOOK at the BYTES of the file. Trivial to do.
I can create a tool in 15 minutes in C++ or Perl that can
do it for ANY file on the disk. (Well, "locked" files
may present a problem.) I'd rather not have to do that,
though. Explorer SAYS it will search ALL FILES, but it
lies.

AND.... Windows 9x and Windows 3.1 and DOS all did it
perfectly well WITHOUT any "filter". Every OS I've ever
worked on (eighteen at last count) could do it just as
easily. But now WinXP can't do that simple task.

When I tell Explorer to SEARCH ALL FILES, I expect it to
do EXACTLY that. Just as it has done for the past dozen
years or so.

Perhaps you should use 98 as XP seems beyond you.

Ha-ha-ha! Having written two operating systems myself
(well, 80% of each), XP is not a problem. It's the LACK of
capability in XP that is the problem.

Simple byte-access of files seems beyond MS. The guy that
knew how to do it in Win9x and earlier must have left the
company.

Mike

 

[David Candy]

As I said earlier. You don't want to search that bad do you? As you note XP isn't as stupid as earlier versions of XP's search. It searches content (NOTE CONTENT - con files have unknown content), generates abstracts, can do vector searching, boolean searching. The manual on search is hundreds of pages.

Google doesn't do byte comparsions. XP's as smart as google. MS web site uses this and always has.

If you have written 80% of operating systems (a four function calculator was it?). Then use a command prompt. See Findstr.

Or recant.

 

[Guest]

As you note XP isn't as stupid as earlier versions of XP's search.

I didn't "note" that. You must have misread something.

It searches content (NOTE CONTENT - con files have unknown content),

"Unknown" in only one sense. It's still a stream of bytes.
Only an EMPTY file has no CONTENT. "con" files have whatever
content is put in them. ALL files over ZERO bytes long have
"content". It's easy to search the CONTENT of ANY file: open
it up and look at the bytes.

The manual on search is hundreds of pages.

And yet it can't do the SIMPLEST search in the world.

Google doesn't do byte comparsions. XP's as smart as google.
MS web site uses this and always has.

Irrelevant. I'm not talking about Websites. I'm talking
about files ON MY COMPUTER. This isn't InternetExplorer.
It's WindowsExplorer. And they've crippled the simplest
search function possible. Why not at least leave an option
to select "simple dumb string search"??

If you have written 80% of operating systems (a four function
calculator was it?).

Not 80% of all OSs. Only two. And they're flying in
USNavy aircraft every day. Not the flight control systems.
These were Electronic Intelligence gathering systems. But
that was almost 20 years ago (on AYK-14(V) hardware [OLD!]).
Now I'm one of about 150 folks writing the latest generation
of the F/A-18 E/F AMC OFP (that's Advanced Mission Computer
Operational Flight Program). It's what I do for a living
(and have for the last 28 years).

Then use a command prompt. See Findstr.

Hmmm. So WinXP Pro can't do a simple search that the DOS
command prompt can do? Yet Win3.1/9x/NT/2K can all do
this simple task.

Mike

 

[Guest]

You don't want to search that bad do you?

Yes, I do. I want to know which files out of a couple
hundred have a particular string in them.

That's why I'm doing a Search.

Mike

 

[David Candy]

You can ask it to do anything - but you must recant before I'll tell you how. The RAAF flies earler versions of this crap plane. And we will probably make the same mistake and buy the stupid JSF. SU-30s or F-22 are the only planes worth buying.

--
----------------------------------------------------------
http://www.uscricket.com

As you note XP isn't as stupid as earlier versions of XP's search.

I didn't "note" that. You must have misread something.

It searches content (NOTE CONTENT - con files have unknown content),

"Unknown" in only one sense. It's still a stream of bytes.
Only an EMPTY file has no CONTENT. "con" files have whatever
content is put in them. ALL files over ZERO bytes long have
"content". It's easy to search the CONTENT of ANY file: open
it up and look at the bytes.

The manual on search is hundreds of pages.

And yet it can't do the SIMPLEST search in the world.

Google doesn't do byte comparsions. XP's as smart as google.
MS web site uses this and always has.

Irrelevant. I'm not talking about Websites. I'm talking
about files ON MY COMPUTER. This isn't InternetExplorer.
It's WindowsExplorer. And they've crippled the simplest
search function possible. Why not at least leave an option
to select "simple dumb string search"??

If you have written 80% of operating systems (a four function
calculator was it?).

Not 80% of all OSs. Only two. And they're flying in
USNavy aircraft every day. Not the flight control systems.
These were Electronic Intelligence gathering systems. But
that was almost 20 years ago (on AYK-14(V) hardware [OLD!]).
Now I'm one of about 150 folks writing the latest generation
of the F/A-18 E/F AMC OFP (that's Advanced Mission Computer
Operational Flight Program). It's what I do for a living
(and have for the last 28 years).

Then use a command prompt. See Findstr.

Hmmm. So WinXP Pro can't do a simple search that the DOS
command prompt can do? Yet Win3.1/9x/NT/2K can all do
this simple task.

Mike

 

[Guest]

And just a small note 98, 95, 2000, ME, NT4 does NOT search for all text.
So you are wrong on that too.

Where do you get that? I have a Win95 system, a Win98SE system,
and a WinXP system here at home. At work, my WinNT system was
upgraded to Win2000 a couple years ago.

ALL of those systems except the WinXP one will search for text
strings in ANY file on the system (except locked files of course).

They DO "search for all text". Why do you believe they don't?

Mike