Slow searching (files and folders)?

Search in XP taking too long? Perhaps you are like me and have hundreds of zip files lying around your machine. I don't know about Vista, but by default, XP searches inside zip files. It got so bad, I quit using windows to search and relied almost exclusively on launchy. Today, I found a simple fix:

In a cmd prompt, type the following:
regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll

This turns off searching inside zip folders. Searches that used to hang and never finish on my machine now finish in under 5 seconds. The down side is that Windows forgets how to open zip files. This is easily addressed by a wide variety of freeware and shareware archive handling programs. My favorite is Winzip. Another way around this is to issue the opposite command:
regsvr32 zipfldr.dll

This restores Windows' ability to handle zip files but also reinstates the undesirable behavior of searching inside zips for every search. At home I'm a Mac user but during the day I gotta use Windows. I'm always looking for ways to make Windows easier to use and today's discovery makes a huge difference for me. If you don't have your system cluttered with hundreds or perhaps thousands of zip files, this fix won't help you. But if you notice search hanging for a long time before returning useful results, this might be the answer.

 

Tried turning on the index?

 

Are you serious? In a google search on indexing, the 4th link led me to the following:

More here...

I'm looking for ways to speed up windows, not slow it down even more. Search is instantaneous now without turning on indexing. The true culprit really really was allowing windows to search inside zip files. Really it was.

I don't know if I agree with the guy that said indexing was bloated and useless, but I do doubt turning on indexing to be necessary in my situation when I have already seen instantaneous search results by merely disabling search inside zip files.

 

To be honest, when you turn on the index on XP, it will be slow as it indexes but once it's done it won't be noticeable since it's just gonna update the index and not re-create it.