Windows Desktop Search and FAT32

[Dave-H]

I've installed Windows (Desktop) Search 4.0 on my XP SP3 system.

It has always worked OK, but I've been annoyed that it never seems to update the information about the files on my local drives after the initial crawl (which takes ages of course).

Finally today, after yet another search to try and find the reason for this, I came across the information (which I think has been pretty well hidden by MS!) that the automatic immediate update of drive contents only works with NTFS drives.

All my drives are FAT32, as they have to be because my system is dual booted with Windows 98, which can't work with NTFS drives of course.

I've tried installing an add-in, UNCFATPHInstaller.msi, which I thought might resolve this, but it hasn't.

I suspect that it only allows notifications on remote FAT drives, not local drives, which is really annoying!

It may be that I can't do anything about this, but the MS article I found, in the "File Systems and Removable Media Support" section says that with FAT local drives " WDS periodically crawls the drive looking for changes in data".

Well, I've no evidence that WDS on my system ever does this.

When I search there are files listed that I deleted or moved or renamed weeks ago, and "can't be found" if I click on them in the list of course, and files added weeks ago aren't there.

It comes good if I rebuild of course, but this takes a very long time!

(BTW I realise that the MS article is for WDS 3, but I assume all this applies to WDS 4 as well.)

Anyone any idea exactly how often the index crawler should look for changes in FAT local drives, and whether the period between checks can be changed?

As I said, I don't think WDS on my system ever does it at all!

Thanks, Dave.