vista "search" sucks... help please

how come vista search doesn't show all the files... i go to search, and and go to advanced, switch it to everywhere, and it just won't show all the little files i'm looking for like my stupid fl studio vst folder, and other folders. i find it much harder to find things now opposed to xp pro's search. is there any search program that i could download that will actually show me what i'm looking for when i type a name in????? thanks

 

have u checked the location of ur files under "advanced search"?
for any search engine, it is good to start indexing ALL locations first

u must tell it where the files r located, as above, or create an index of ur system

http://landvermesser.tripod.com/MacSearch.html
works wonder, quite nifty little "Spotlight" clone (if u ever use a Mac), under xp and vista

cheers ...

 

I think the Windows Search is a nice attempt, but a much better one is what I've used for quite some time: www.copernic.com

Bill

 

I kinda like Vista's search...it's built in and it's pretty decent.

 

Well said and simply.....true. Copernic has owned this field for a while now - best performance, least CPU hit and best interface. Not close on any of these parameters if you actually try out the search engines on your machine for a few days. And this goes back 2-3 years.

Why Microsoft hasnt just faced the facts and simply gone out and bought Copernic, I have no idea. But to insert their turdly offering into the OS - thus forcing it on people - is an even worse idea that not buying Copernic to begin with.

 

I took your advice and downloaded Copernic and I was sorely disappointed. I spent hours searching for all files whose names contained a string of characters and it NEVER FOUND ANY even though there were many. It turns out that it does not have the ability to search for a string WITHIN a file name, only if the file name BEGINS with the search string. WTF?? It is as if the software was written by high school students or something. Why do you say it is so good if it doesn't have that simple and vitally important feature? Arrrghhhh! It really irritates me. And the help pissed me off too because it never gives the rules for forming a search. It keeps saying to enter a keyword, which they never define. Nowhere else is the word keyword used the way they use it. Keywords to everyone else in the world are assigned words and substrings of file names. Again, one suspects that this was written by kids who have no experience in the real world of software development.

But what is even worse, is that Vista can't find the damn files under ANY circumstances. I try starting the search in the very folder in which the file resides and in which it is the ONLY file. It doesn't matter if I give a part of the file name, or the whole thing, Vista fails to find it! What the F is going on???? Vista is THE WORST ever. I can't do the simple things that I need to do every day. And I can't downgrade (I should say upgrade) to XP because Sony doesn't provide XP drivers for the hardware in the laptop. I really, really hate this. And I used to be a Microsoft fan.

 

Completely commiserate with you! I can't get that piece of crap to work either. No matter what I try, it fails to find a gif. I specify All types of files, I give the complete file name and extension, I try advanced search using non-indexed files, everything. And it never finds the files. Actually, there are several hundred files on my hard drive that match the search term and it finds NOT ONE of them. Total piece of crap!

 

Weird, my windows search finds everything, are you talking about searching in the "start" menu? Only searches that come up on there are the ones that are in the indexed folders.

If you go into actual "search" command, make sure u click advanced, check "include non-indexed, hidden.." and put the file name or part of name in the search box on top of the window, not the "name" box (one on top of "tag", boxes in advanced search). make sure show "all" is selected...

Works for me.

 

@donfrench:
. cant help much on ur issues with Vista Search if u still had them after all the suggestions above, since i have none of them
. would u try TotalCommander?

cheers ...

 

I have tried both ways, from the Start menu and from Explorer. And I have tried setting every possible option. It is just infuriating that such an important feature is so buggy. I wonder if the OP ever got it to work.

 

And what possible excuse could Microsoft have for not providing a Classic version of the explorer. It worked great and was as comfortable as an old pair of jeans. I think that the new explorer has turned more people off to Vista than anything else except for the horrible performance. Have you ever tried to search for text inside a file? It is possible but try to figure out how to do it some time. I am just disgusted. I find myself literally screaming at my computer almost every day. Man! Talk about screwing up a good thing! I think that Vista marks the beginning of the end for Microsoft.

 

I am not familiar with Total Commander. I will take a look at it. Thanks.

 

Don,

Sorry to hear of so many problems. I don't intend to insult your intelligence, so please don't be offended (you probably know more about computers than I do!), but I take it that you first had Copernic index the contents of your hard drive. That takes a while (on my previous computer, I remember it taking a couple of days. I'm sure it was much quicker on the HP I bought last February or whenever, but I don't remember.

Maybe we're looking for different types of items. All I need to find are word processing files and emails, so I type a word that I'm sure will be in a file I need. Copernic really does a great job for me, but perhaps your needs are more sophisticated than mine.

I would encourage you to be patient and explore Copernic more. It has so many users who swear by it that we can't all be so badly wrong.

Hope you the best, and happy new year.

Bill

 

Yeah.. I use copernic a lot too.. It's much better than windows search..

What abt google desktop? have you tried that? I've heard about it but i havent used it yet.

 

You didn't insult my intelligence. I allowed Copernic to complete indexing my hard drive and it works within its limitations. But the limitations are serious and hard to fathom. Here is what I find unacceptable about Copernic. A common scenario is when you know part of the file name you are looking for but not all of it. Or you want to find all files with some character string in the name. With every other file search program I have ever used, there is some way to search for file names that CONTAIN the known string.

For example, I have many thousands of image files on my computer. And I have many different versions of a lot of them because I work on the images and save versions of them at different stages. I always include the original name of the file as it came out of the camera, but with text added to the beginning of the names to remind me what work I did on the image. These can get scattered all over my hard drive but I can always find all versions of an image if I search for the common string that is embedded in the file name. There are many other scenarios where I just want to search for a partial file name when I can't recall the entire name. But that works with Copernic only if the file name STARTS with that string. This design flaw makes Copernic next to useless in my opinion.

 

Appears to me as though someone needs to have a better "system" for storing their files.

 

You are trying to find a *.gif file somewhere? I'm having a hard time myself trying to follow your post. You typed in part of the file name and you know it's not in an indexed location. make sure you set your search location from "indexed locations" to "everywhere."

 

You could try the application Launchy. It's very useful and i use it all the time.

 

Sorry if I wasn't clear. Maybe the problem is that we have been discussing two different file search programs and different issues with each. The first was Vista's explorer search and the second is Copernic, a suggested replacement for Vista's search. In Vista, I did choose the Everywhere option and it didn't find my files. But what is more, the entire disk is indexed so it shouldn't matter. In Copernic, my complaint is that it can only find those files in which the search string appears at the beginning of the file name.

I hope that is clearer.

 

I hope that you aren't saying that file search software need not be designed to find files reliably on systems where the files are named oddly (by your standards). Blaming the user for flaws in software design is just wrong, but I have seen it all too frequently, even among the developers themselves. Especially among the developers. But the developers and their defenders tend usually to be on the immature side in my experience.

 

any luck with total commander?

cheers ...

 

Hmmm. Works for me. I have Indexing turned off, but as you can see in the picture Vista still finds my files.



And it finds even more if I include non-indexed, hidden and system files.

 

I just discovered the solution to the problem I was having with Vista search. Microsoft, in all its wisdom, changed the rules for forming the search term. In XP and before, you only needed to enter the string that you wanted to search file names for. In Vista, you must use the asterisk to indicate "any string". For example, to find all files with "ABC" in their names, you must enter *ABC* in the search term. Then it finds ABCDEF.jpg, DEFABC.jpg and DEF.ABC. Whereas with XP, all you had to enter was ABC and you would get the same results. Why they thought that they had to change the rules, I don't know. It is one more thing that just totally pisses me off about Vista. They arbitrarily changed stuff that worked great before. And in the process they made a lot of people irritated and frustrated and caused them to despise Microsoft.

By the way, has anyone tried to change their Indexing settings? I find it impossible myself. The little boxes in the Control Panel next to the directories that have check marks in them don't accept changes, at least not for me. But if I right click on a directory I find a check box that says Index this folder or something similar. But even when you do, it does not change the contents of the check boxes. Did MS stop hiring usability experts? Did they stop doing quality control when they decided to publish Vista? So much stuff either doesn't work at all or it doesn't work intuitively. I am really disgusted with Vista and MS.

 

Try searching for a string that is not at the beginning of the file name, one that is embedded. It used to work in XP.

 

As you can see, some of the files found had the string "img" not at the beginning.

 

That's what change causes... relearning...

Microsoft changed the way you phrased a query in vista to be both standard (as Vista search can be used by applications internally) and quick. By making the engine return the results closest to what you're typing the engine gives you a lot less "noise" and operates faster.

They are using all the standard search operators used elsewhere though