Win 7 search blows!!! any suggestions

I have become increasing frustrated with the crappy win 7 search...why did they nerf it to being completely useless. You can set up any search peramiters anymore. What gives? Is there any other 3rd party program to use because I used to use the search feature in xp like crazy and now i just resort to browsing through countless folders becuase the windows search feature sucks and cant even find the files i look for.

 

what exactly are you trying to do that doesnt work? Windows 7 search function works great when you are searching for documents and key words in documents. But you need to set up the indexes correctly if you want to search folders outside of My Documents and other default folders.

You can always try google desktop search.

 

You want everything! That's what I want too. Good search program and it's free.

Here's the link: Download Everything

 

Reply to Twiz

lol

thx guys and i didnt know google desktop search works for win 7


I'll search for doc for documents and it wont pop up the document i need so i spend like an hour searching for it. for some reason when you search doc it doesnt pop up all of them and i can never remember what i call files...an example is did i name it network passwords or passwords or network access codes or whatever so i search doc and i never find the one file...its really annoying. Doesn't help when you have memory problems :/

 

I use X1 for power.
X1 Email Search, Application Search and eDiscovery
.

BTW, download everything only seems to index file names not contents.

 

I have had several troubles with W7 search, so i don't trust it.

Btw check if Windows Search service is running.

 

window search service is running..i notice that everytime i open task manager. Didn't know that was for that ^^.

EDIT:i'll try all these things when i go home on leave wednesday

 

Back in the day I loved Launchy.

 

Agree 200%.

Any program that could match the (for me) excellent xp search ?

 

at 6730

I'll let you know how these programs work. last time i used google desktop search it seem unneccarry but now it might come in handy...plus it used alot of resources on my slow pc. this one computer should have that problem lol.

 

Quick look at it, it does not provide content search. So I'll call it Something or Much, but not Everything.

Am currently using Super Finder & SearchMyFiles, they are good, got content, date, size, attributes, open containing folder etc etc, and many an advanced option when needed, but (seemingly) lacking xp's possibility to choose to see results as Thumbnails \ list or whatever instead of details only.

Anybody make a W7 search program as complete and easy to use as the the xp search and I'll buy.

 

You still can, they just took out the GUI for it... now you have to use the advanced query syntax... see here: Windows Search Advanced Query Syntax

However, I do feel that they should have kept the advanced search GUI that was in Vista.

Of course, using a third-party search product is also an option... there are quite a few of them out there.

 

i know this is alot to ask of but why not just keep your stuff in order? i do and it saves me a massive amount of time for the little time it takes up when i get a new file.

 

+1
While XP may have been slower due to older indexing, it never missed anything.
In W7 there's a whole different picture, I can search for something I know I've got in Documents, and it never shows up.

My Windows Search Service is not assigned to a group, is that a problem?
Running a Vlited version, but search didn't work any better with the original install anyway

NBR are doing a lot of top-ten lists these days, well here they have a subject for their next article.. .

 

LOL well that's easy to say about personal stuff, but it's impossible if you're looking for software files,
since you haven't maually placed the files where they are in the first place (no pun intended).

Besides, it should just work, no matter if you may find it useful or not.

 

Get Everything.

/thread

 

Wait what?! OF COURSE YOU CAN! - with great details as well.

Windows Search Advanced Query Syntax
There is well over 130 refinements you can do simultaneously when you perform a search to find what you need. And if it's under an index location (see Control Panel > index to add locations and more settings), you'll get them virtually instantly.


Please READ the help document! It helps getting the best experience out of something.

 

lol i was waiting for someone like goodbytes to come along and explain how to use windows 7's search, isn't it obvious that the features exist within windows 7? it's practically one of the most basic of necessities to an operating system.. if windows 7 didnt have it.. then we would always hear people complaining about it,
improved search was one of the main platforms that microsoft ran on when promoting vista, and it could have only gotten better in 7, or else i have no idea how those programmers at microsoft are getting paid god knows how much

 

And it SUCKS! Oh joy we get to use some archaic command line language to do a compound search. What a freakin' giant step backwards. Command line arguments, really? Totally ridiculous. Welcome back to DOS, friends.

Sorry for the rant, but this is the single stupidest decision ever made by the development team in Redmond. Who ever approved this should have been fired when Win7 hit the streets. Forcing users to remember these stupid commands to do a search that the might do once every 6 months is just plain nuts. Sure it's great to have these, but in ADDITION to a GUI not as a replacement for it. How often do I need to do a date range search for a file, oh maybe twice a year. With the Vista GUI it was obvious how to do it. With Win7, I first have to go search for some instructions on how to do it.

What used to be obvious to the casual user, now requires instructions??? Sorry this was NOT an improvement. It was and is asinine.

Gary

 

Trouble is, it isn't obvious. It was obvious in XP, and Vista. In Win7 it requires a damn instruction manual. And people have been complaining about it since the day Win7 was released.

Gary

 

It certainly did got much worse in W7 than 98,2000,XP .

 

Only the user interface. The actual search and indexing engine is much better in Win7. It is just the brain dead user interface that is the issue.

Gary

 

I'm not sure, I mean, how come it just won't find files I know is there?
Not talking about using the Advanced Query Syntax, that's useful too, but how about the most simple tasks?
If I want to find a file called "nbr.txt" and search for "nbr", it won't always show up!

This is the biggest issue with W7 for me.
The missing up button is no problem thanks to Classic Shell,
and battery issues when upgrading is rare or random.

 

oh wow people, just ditch that stupid thing and use some of the better alternatives suggested in this thread....

 

I did try Everything, but it's only for searching AFAIK. What do you use for anything else?

I've been in this situation before, looking for an alternative and find it, but I always end up using two programs because there's always something missing.
It happended with DirOpus, ExplorerXP, Everything, and it will happen again.

I want one single program. Even a toolbar would be fine even though I hate them in web browsers.

 

To say the truth I agree with teh GUI, but imagine having that when you press Advance, you have 130 text fields that pop-up for every argument... Holy crap! Is most likely the reaction you'll have. Complex interfaces are not appealing. It look like some crazy contract. Then what? Have 2 advance option on the panel?

"Dumb down Advance options because it's too complex"
"Advance options"


Sure you COULD have both systems, but then someone that will want to use one of the items not in the list, will complain...

I like, for a change, that a product (which ever it is), doesn't treat you like an idiot. Like my microwave that says "Do not try house pets in Microwave", or McDonald's bad of peanuts"Crushed peanuts*" and at the back at the bottom you have "* may contain peanuts". Oh REALLY?!
Oh critics that complained that Inception was not "dumb-down" for the general mass. What the hack, I am tiered of this! Sorry... I went into a rant mode. I'll shut up now.

 

No problems here with Windows 7 search.

 

Let me start by saying I don't think you were on a rant at all. I think we have a good dialog going here about this.

First a GUI would not preclude a user typing in the syntax currently required. I do think it is very possible to create a gui that would not involve 130 text boxes. Rather a simple drop down to select from a list of search types:

Author
From
Before
After
Has
Is
Size
Date
Kind

Then when one of them is selected a set of boxes or additional dropdowns would appear for further refinement.

Another dropdown would be used to select from the "Kind" list of file properties. Selecting one of those would cause a Properties drop down to appear.

A button labeled AND and one labeled OR, would allow for adding additional search parameters. Clicking one would cause a second instance of the original search types drop down to appear.

We have had similar interfaces for years to build queries in SQL, Access and other applications. This is nothing new.

Such a GUI could even build the query in the text box as the user makes their selection. In fact I think it SHOULD do that. First because it would allow for easy refinement/changes to the query and second because it would teach the user the syntax required to do a similar search in the future.

The addition of all these new arguments available in a search, didn't require dispensing with a GUI. In fact just the opposite, it required building an improved one. Especially in light of the fact that many of these options are rarely used by most folks. Actually more to the point, one subset of these arguments might fall into everyday use for a certain class of user. While a totally different subset my apply to another class. But on occasion each of the two classes might need to utilize the arguments the other class uses daily. In such cases, this occasional or "casual use" is totally hampered by the lack of a gui. Is it really a good idea to expect this casual use to require digging out a help file for the correct syntax? The obvious answer is no. Doing so means the casual use won't happen at all.

I design software and this lack of a real user interface flies in the face of the very design principles that Microsoft itself has pushed developers to use for years.

Gary

 

Agree. Am needing quick and easy to use and modify, 100% reliable search, had it all in XP, perfect. W7 search\interface is a major step backwards, clumsy and lack of overview, and worst of all, cannot trust the results. XP, on the other hand, always digging up any content from any obscure locations, without any hassle, never failing or confusing. With w7, am finding files in the end, but often only because I roughly know where they are, or where they used to be. There should be no need to use any third party program for such a basic OS function, but it looks like the only way to go.
See my former post in http://forum.notebookreview.com/win...arch-blows-any-suggestions-2.html#post6578403 for comments about alternatives with quite decent interfaces.

ps, a dozen machines were upgraded form XP to w7 at my work place (electronics research and construction), no problems apart from major headaches, irritation and time wasting in trying to get w7 search to behave, often ending up argumenting with arguments instead of just simply finding what's needed NOW. Worst of all, even after getting results, nobody really trusts if w7 found everything, was never the slightest of doubt with xp.

 

XP search good? Your joking right? That thing can't even find . It's not my porblem if you don't understand how Windows Vista/7 search works.
It's simple. It indexes everything to have everything found instantly. If it's not in the index and you set Windows to not look outside of the index, then you won't have any result.

Let me help you out:
- Control Panel > Folder Options. On the Folder Option panel, go to the Search tab. Here you will find a multitude of options to personalize the search system to your needs.

- Control Panel > Index Options. On this panel you can define the index areas to index. Clicking on the Modify button, will allow you to add the areas that you want Windows to index. Doing so, allows you to not index files you will never look for (for instance you don't need to search files under Windows directory. Most likely you will look for files in your documents. Please note that if your users, has files and folders in a different drive, then you need to add that.) Clicking on the Advance button, you have advance options such as the location to where the indexing is stored (important.. if a user changed computer and log-in to his account, Windows will need to re-index everything as it won't be in his or her profile, you have to move it to their profile). Additionally you can set which file type you want WIndows to index the content or just the file name. Please note that files that are not text that YOU can read (ie: binary) won't be readable to Windows. SO THAT MEANS, it can't search in PDF files.

 

That is the true joke. WinXP search always worked for me. It was not sophisticated, but it did it's basic job well.

There is only one thing to understand in W7 search. You can't trust it.

 

Wrong. Are we talking about the same XP? See the attachment. A quick & easy XP search setup, and it digs out any file, or any obscure detail inside any file, on any drive, from any date, in any location. Extras I use now and then is *, ?. Very capable, never fails, easy to sort out results etc.

Never. Content in specialized folders on internal disks, usb drives + networks.

Anyway, am probably over-familiar with some xp features after all these years, and thanks a lot for the info & tips, will (again) go trough the w7 search setup, have not given up (yet).

 

Hmm...interesting point. That is most likely the case. When Vista was out, I read the whole documentation (I admit it) on search system, and used it extensively to organize all my files and everything (I lost all my organization due to a bad backup software). I guess this level of practice made me comfortable with it, without really knowing.

I do agree with you on something. They should but some popular search in advance field, and perhaps have a link saying something like "How to use more advance terms in my search", which could lead to a help documentation.

 

I think that is precisely what those of us who have been saying that the Vista/Win7 search gui sucks have been calling for. There is a REAL need for some advanced options and a quick link to the help documentation. It is totally ridiculous that this was not done upon release of the new search.

I love the control panel options you mentioned. I especially like being able to finely control, what items get indexed. They only think I don't like is the gui, or should I say LACK OF a gui.

Gary

 

Are you sure about that? I am certain that you CAN search inside PDF files. See attached.

Gary

 

Aha! I guess Adobe updated their system to allow Windows to understand them. I rarely work with PDF, last I tried was when Win7 was just out.

 

Try here??:

Note
Before doing a search in Windows 7, you should make sure that you have set your Search Options for the What to search, How to search, and When searching non-indexed locations settings. If you have the index enabled (it is by default), then you should also have any locations and file types added to be indexed so they will be included in the search results when doing a search. If the files have been recently changed, then the index may not have finshed updating yet and you will need to manually rebuild the index to force it to update now.

Search in Windows 7 - Windows 7 Forums

 

Oddly enough, I let Windows 7 index my entire hard drive on clean install, and I make sure it's got the entire drive in there. Caused massive slowdowns for a day or so, but I don't have issues bringing up any files documents outlook emails or programs I need via typing into the start menu. I'm sure I'm taking a constant performance hit, but Win7 search hasn't caused me any of the grief cited above.

 

if you havn't tried it, give agent ransack a go. i couldn't stand windows 7 search either.

this one's much faster and doesn't leave out stuff which should have been in the search list. can replace the f3 keybind in explorer.

its free and it's fast! i can do a complete search in a 1 tb drive in less than a minute for the first search and in under 5 seconds for consequent searches.

 

Not a good idea to have it do the ENTIRE drive. You sure don't want it indexing the registry for example. Having it do the entire drive is certain to give you the "thrashing" folks have bad mouthed Search over. The indexing service will try to index every single file change, the way you have it configured now.

Restrict it to you documents, music, photos, your start menu (to help you find apps quickly) and any other places you NEED to have indexed. Once you do that the indexing service becomes quiet as a mouse after it creates it's initial index.

Gary

 

A file name search or a contents search?

Gary

 

I do enjoy reading your rants, Gary.

 

I have it set to index everything but %systemroot%\Windows. It gets thrashed for maybe a day, left alone, then it's fine. It definitely pissed me off before I realized what it was doing, but once it was done I never noticed it again unless I plugged in a new external document drive. My onboard files are fairly static, and the few I add on a daily/weekly basis do not even remotely bog it down. My personal files are all tree-structured to hell anyway, so it's only really used for finding an obscure reference I can't recall the location of. Win7 Indexing might be a little slow and consume some resources, but it's more thorough with document contents than the other options out there. 3rd Party options tend to index the filename, but don't often go deep intent the contents (or at least make it harder to go deep)

 

Oh, then I don't have any concerns with a recommendation like that. As long as the Windows directory is out of the mix, that will eliminate most of the potential for headache with indexing. I tend to do it the other way by specifying what I want to include rather than what I want to exclude. But either way works fine. The point I wanted to make, and you helped reinforce it, is that folks should adjust the indexed locations to suit thier own needs.

Gary

 

Well, while I agree with you on the substance, I am not entirely sure how far, or if at all, it is Microsoft that's to blame for this. I have a hunch that we should really thank our friends at Google for this, who, remember, sued Microsoft before in order to get them to make Windows desktop search less accessible in Vista (which Microsoft did with Vista SP1). Google was concerned that they couldn't foist as much of their garbage on the unsuspecting public, and decided to force Microsoft's hand for this reason.

Now, I am not sure if this is what happened here, but I wouldn't be suprised.

 

both. has a "file name" input box, and a "contains text" box as well as date search etc... its actually quite powerful for a "lite" version of their pro tool.
works for pdf/office/text documents

either search is fast, much faster than the windows search and unlike the windows search, this one doesn't miss stuff.

to give you an idea, i did a search on a usb drive freshly inserted.
parameters were
file name: "*.pdf"
contains text: "requirements"

found 23 pdfs all various install manuals from online stuff (steam game backups mainly)
searched through a total of 590gb of data (113,137 items) in 14 seconds. this was an inserted usb drive... not pre-indexed system drive. i don't even want to think about how long it would take windows search to do the same.

*edit*
oh and consequent searches of the drive took 3 seconds!
even if its unrelated to the previous search (for instance "*.mp3;*.wma")

 

How long WITHOUT the filename argument? Restricting it to just pdf files skewed the results a LOT.

Gary

 

Correct. The number of 590GB of data that was given is entirely meaningless without knowledge of the total number and size of pdf files present on the drive. And even though xeroxide doesn't "even want to think about how long it would take windows search to do the same", that is exactly what he should try and find out, before making any sorts of pronouncements... Certainly I can put together a set of files on a USB drive that results in Windows Search finding 23 pdf files with some content a lot faster than the 14 seconds he quoted.

As an aside, the search speed is, of course, strongly dependent on the PDF iFilter you use. The Foxit filter is a lot faster than Adobe's filter (which doesn't even exist/work properly on 64-bit Windows).

 

wow i cant believe people are still going on this ^^ I havent tried anything else yet. I need to reinstall windows first but that command line search is retarded ^^

 

agent ransack was designed as a power tool, not an aesthetically pleasing tool for amertures. the windows search will automatically only search the contents of particular file types (and by default only indexed locations), thus restricting it's power but being overall "easier" to use. to my knowledge, i can't seperate the file name search from the file contents search in windows 7 default search either. this to me is silly.

without manuall restricting file types, agent ransack will search for the contents in ANY file, be it dll, exe, avi, mpg, mp3. obviously then, agent ransack will take longer.

i guess i love the tool since i love the control it allows while being very thorough. windows 7 search either giving me irrelevant results or completely missing the actual thing i want to find made me have enough. A good search tool should always allow you to be as efficient as possible, i find windows search to be rather restrictive rather than allow user control. small things like having seperate search boxes for "file name" and "contents" allow for much more control.

i tried a contents search with both windows 7 search and agent ransack.
i searched for the word "argument" in my external drive (esata - once again not indexed) i had to change settings in default windows search to search for contents of all files and not just indexed.

windows 7 search took 27min and found only a few text files, vbs scripts, batch files, pdf and doc.

agent ransack took me 21min (21:34 to be exact, agent ransack has it's own timer, unlike windows 7 search which i lost some time having to get out my stopwatch app on the phone).... and it found all the above files along with exe, dll and many many more....

even though windows 7 search was "smarter" (in this case i truly believe covering up for the silly end user), agent ransack was FASTER.

one could debate that indexed would have smashed the agent ransack time and this is true, however there's a price to pay for indexing and i'm not willing to pay it. especially since i can just be a little smarter in my searches and achieve superior performance to anything else.

i just can't believe i wasted 50minutes of my time to prove anything... just try it for yourselves honestly before making judgements. consider the fact that it is free and quite possibly one of the most POWERFUL search tools available for nothing.