How does Windows 7 search work?

[johnhc]

Does anyone understand Windows 7 search - certainly not I? I cannot get consistent results for it. In fact, I cannot even tell when it is through searching. Where can I find a really good tutorial/guide to it? What are the key words (name: content: type: kind: etc)? What do they do and not do? I have a folder containing about 100,000 items and I want to search for any file/folder name in it containing "en-us" without the quotes, of course. If I use PDfind (from maxXPsoft) it takes about 5-10 seconds and finds 3200 items. Using XP x64 from another partition, the built in search takes a little longer than PDfind but also finds 3200 items. Using name:en-us in W7 finds various numbers of items (around 900, maybe more if I sit for awhile). I noticed that there were no .manifest files include in the W7 results, so I went into Indexing Options - Advanced - File Types and changed .manifest to "Index file properties and content". Quickly after this took effect, my search suddenly showed 3200 items. But, when I reopened the folder and repeated the search from scratch, it was going so slowly, that I gave up when it was up to only about 100 items. When I had the 3200 result from W7, I copied all 3200 items into a folder. I had done this also for the 3200 items from the PDfind search. The properties for these two folders are identical and I expect the 3200 items are identical.

Windows 7 search is one of the most frustrating experiences I have had with computers but I suspect hidden under all this is a truly classy, fast and attractive search function. I just don't have a clue how to use it properly. I would very much appreciate any comments/help. Thanks much and enjoy, John.

Edited October 31, 2010 by johnhc

[vinifera]

just use alternatives

Everything

UltraSearch

...

whatever

they are all fast

MS ones are slow, resource hungry and quite stupid

[johnhc]

just use alternatives

Everything

UltraSearch

...

whatever

they are all fast

MS ones are slow, resource hungry and quite stupid

vinifera, thanks for your reply. I expected to get responses that suggested such and may well have to do just that, but I am hoping someone will be able to point me to some good information. Enjoy, John.

[Tripredacus]

I'm not too fond of the Windows Search either. There are many things it can miss if you don't tell it to index the folders. So I usually still use the dir /s from CMD to do my searching.

[vinifera]

just to add to sillyness of MS

(this will look like advertising but is not , I always intend to recommend better soft that I know of)

example of UltraSearch app, its free, but my main point is that it reads directly from $MFT, no indexing, no nothing

one has to wonder why MS never did such thing, after all they were the ones that wanted instant search with Longhorn

and then reverted to slow indexing again...

also, sorry if this was not replies you wanted

[johnhc]

Tripredacus and vinifera, thanks much for your replies. The Dir search via Command Prompt is indeed fast but not as easy to use as a GUI driven utility (like PDFind). I DLed UltraSearch and played a little, but I could not quickly see how to search a single folder. I need to do some more playing. Thanks to both. And vinifera, I am grateful for all suggestions and open to try things. We all seem to denigrate MS but I can't help but believe that there are some really smart people there and I am afraid that I am missing a really good search engine in the W7 built-in function. I willl continue to look. Thanks again to both. Enjoy, John.

[Guest]

john, try Agent Ransack. You can right click any folder and search.

[johnhc]

john, try Agent Ransack. You can right click any folder and search.

Thanks, -X-. I DLed and installed agentransack and it looks good. One strange thing about this folder is it contains 490 0 byte items and 2710 other. agentransack found all the 0 byte files and confirmed my suspicions. Thanks, John.

[cannie]

Does anyone understand Windows 7 search - certainly not I? I cannot get consistent results for it.

Hi johnhc!

IMHO limits to searches are applied by MS for a better OS security: nothing so secure as invisible OS elements.

I tried many apps and at last the best one I've found is FreeCommander.

HTH

[johnhc]

Hi johnhc!

IMHO limits to searches are applied by MS for a better OS security: nothing so secure as invisible OS elements.

I tried many apps and at last the best one I've found is FreeCommander.

HTH

cannie, thanks but FreeCommander looks more like a replacement for Windows Explorer and I am only looking for a fast and effective search utility. Enjoy, John.

[johnhc]

Followup: I have been using Agent Ransack for some time now and am very pleased with it. I was looking for some text a program was using in a menu and suspected it was in some file in the program's folder. I used Agent Ransack to search the folder for the string and found it quickly. It was in a .dll file in Unicode. Both conditions surprised me. One thing I have discovered about the search in W7 is it does a great job of finding empty files (0 bytes). Use size:empty and quickly all empty files are found. Agent Ransack cannot seem to find empty files and reports all folders as empty files. Enjoy, John.