To be honest, I hate windows 7 and vista search..its annoying, not very user friendly and i just plain dont like it. Is there anyway to get the classic windows xp search (not that windows search 4.0 crap) but the search companion installed and working with win7. I'm not in it for speed, or indexing or anything else. I just like the interface in xp for searching for files..its simply and it works.

Any thoughts,

To be honest, I hate windows 7 and vista search..its annoying, not very user friendly and i just plain dont like it. Is there anyway to get the classic windows xp search (not that windows search 4.0 crap) but the search companion installed and working with win7. I'm not in it for speed, or indexing or anything else. I just like the interface in xp for searching for files..its simply and it works.

Any thoughts,

I feel your pain. Just started using FileSearchEX and loving it!

The main thing I have against search in Vista (and perhaps Win7, though I haven't tried it) is that I cannot search for text within files—if there is a way then I haven't found it. As often as I need this feature of Search Companion for XP, this is a deal-breaker.

If anybody has a free alternative that works for x64 and can search hidden and system folders, I'd be most grateful.

The main thing I have against search in Vista (and perhaps Win7, though I haven't tried it) is that I cannot search for text within files—if there is a way then I haven't found it. As often as I need this feature of Search Companion for XP, this is a deal-breaker.

If anybody has a free alternative that works for x64 and can search hidden and system folders, I'd be most grateful.

Can be done: http://maximumpcguides.com/windows-7/set-windows-search-to-search-using-file-names-and-contents-in-indexed-locations-only/

There's an option there to always search file contents (as opposed to indexed locations only). Also to include system directories and disinclude zip files

Interestingly, there's no option to not search file contents...

Edited March 14, 201016 yr by SngBrdb

Thanks for the link, SngBrdb. I'll keep that in mind the next time I have a copy of Win7 to evaluate. Such options either don't exist in Vista, or are effectively buried well enough for me to completely fail to find it. It was not intuitive at all for me.

Try nirsoft "SearchMyFiles"

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/search_my_files.html

Try nirsoft "SearchMyFiles"

I have seen their stuff before but did not know they made a search tool. Over complicated of course so I prefer FileSearchEX for just getting file lists. One thing is certain with 500 and 1000 GB drives we need faster disk access to make all this data management bearable. As soon as I can I am going to get SSD so searching will be so much faster.