Win 7 "search" broken?

[Dexahol]

I take it from other posts here, and my own experience, that Windows 7 search is simply broken. I find a file I want manually, type its name into the search field, and Windows never finds it. Never even completes the search. This is maddening.

[Train]

Search Everything
http://www.voidtools.com/
What I use.

[Dexahol]

Thanks Train. I saw your post about that program in another thread, along with someone else's recommendation for Agent Ransack. I downloaded both, but, by chance, happened to try Ransack first. It works perfectly, so I'll just leave it be.

But ultimately, the answer to the Windows 7 "search" problem, is to go elsewhere besides Microsoft.

[SuperSparks]

Win 7 Search works fine for me

Have you checked in Administrative Tools>Services that the Search Service is started, and is set to Automatic?

[Dexahol]

Yup. Started; Automatic (Delayed Start)

Edit: I wish I could grab an active screenshot of of what happens when I try a search. I get that green-ish progress bar at the top. It slowly moves to the right until it gets in the midst of the red-X box. There it stalls. Never finds anything or completes.

[Welshjim]

Dexahol--Try running search from WinKey + F. Does that progress bar still stall?
If so, maybe this will help
http://www.intowindows.com/how-to-fi...arch-problems/

[Dexahol]

Hey Jim; If I hit the Win-key +F I get nothing. (I mean, I get the search window, but nothing happens.) I don't even get the green progress bar. And, of course, I do type in my search criteria first.

[Dexahol]

It gets better . . . I type "winamp" into the start menu search field. I get the popup that asks if I want to allow "uninstwa" to run. (As in, do I want to uninstall Winamp.) It does this three times. The 4th time it finds two winamp folders, but not the actuall "Winamp" folder under "Programs". The 5th time, it again asks if I want to uninstall Winamp.

Clearly this is a Microsoft "fail" moment.

[Train]

C:\Programs\winamp

what happens

[Dexahol]

Fail!



This was typed into the Start bar search field.

Edit: Note that the program location is actually "Program Files", however, Windows itself isn't capable of recognizing its own folder naming convention, ie, it chokes on the space between "program" and "files".

[Dexahol]

Lets go a step farther. I created a simple text file in Notepad. I saved it as "test.txt" in the temp directory. So, the full path is: c:\temp\test.txt

Very simple. Then I did a search using the Start bar search function, Win-key+F and the Explorer search function. None of them ever completed the search, but they came up with some results, including this sample:



Note the "find" of "MigApp.xml". It has neither "test" nor ".txt" in it, yet windows found it. Windows could not find "c:\temp\test.txt".

I think that pretty much sums it up.

Edit: P.S. Agent Ransack found the test file immediately.

[fink]

I'd try rebuilding the search index.

http://maximumpcguides.com/windows-7...-search-index/

(may take a while)

[Dexahol]

No . . . thats the old "fast search index" thing from Win98. It makes searches "faster", somewhat, at the cost of overall computer speed. It has nothing to do with the search function actually "working".

This is different. Its a bug. Like the fact that File Explorer drops your folder to the bottom of the page, instead of the top. That type of thing. I still like Win 7, but I wish they'ld fix this stuff.

[SuperSparks]

Try running the System File Checker. Go to Start and type "cmd" without the quotes, then right-click cmd.exe and choose "Run as Administrator". Once at the Command Prompt, type "sfc /scannow" without the quotes. You may need your Windows 7 disc, though most of the time you don't.

[fink]

If the existing search index is corrupted it can cause problems with windows search. Rebuilding it may solve the problem.

It might take a couple of hours or so to finish but will not cause any long term slowdowns or aftereffects.