I've already spent ten minutes longer than I should have on this stuff.
The new, and brilliantly powerful search features (yeah right) of Vista and Windows seven have proven to be absolutely useless to me.
Can someone please, in simple terms, tell me how to search for a frickin file? I thought right-clicking the folder I wanted to search and typing in a filename was extremely simple and intuitive. Someone over at Microsoft must've thought otherwise, or didn't think at all which is probably more likely.
I think Win7's search is great. Simply click on Start and enter the file name in the search box.
Right-clicking on a folder? Search has never, at least by default, been a right click option in Windows Explorer. If you had that in XP, you used some 3rd party tweak or something to add it to the context menu.
I'll try searching from the start menu when I get home.
My complaint is, so far, that when I have explorer open and I am viewing the contents of a particular folder (lets say program files) and I type the filename of what I am looking for in the search box in the upper right hand corner it has never produced any results I was looking for. Usually NO file shows up, and yesterday only 1 of 16 files with the same name spread throughout program files showed up. Am I missing something? The only thing I notice out of the ordinary is Vista/Seven always tell me that searching may be slow because the folder is not indexed and gives me the option to index the folder with a warning it may take a long time and slow my computer down. Yet, it never actually continues to search. Do I have to index the folder to search for a file? That seems more counter intuitive than the old way. I'd rather wait for the search if it would really do it.
With Windows XP, if you right click any folder there is a "search" option you can click which will open the standard Windows XP search window with the dog scratching himself. You can then type in a filename and set other options to search that folder for particular files or content. That feature is built in to Windows XP. Works every time. Much more than I can say for Vista or Seven.
Well, I have not disabled indexing Win7 because MS finally got it right and it does not bog down my system. So that may have something to do with it. But in testing your scenario with using the search box in the upper right, it seems to work fine here.
Yeah, its definitely not working for me. I have not specifically turned off indexing, so how do I turn on indexing for all drives?
The problem I am seeing here is, in the future, if I choose to use Windows 7 for my tech PC I will not be able to conveniently search external hard drives for files using explorer because the drive won't be indexed.
What about installing Agent Ransack/ as a replacement search engine? Worked very good for me with XP though I've not had any experience with it on Win 7, other than to try it and see if it worked.
It's a Control Panel applet. And under Advanced, you can rebuild a corrupt index - though that could take many hours as it is done WAY in the background.
Oh yeah, this is WAY more intuitive, thanks so much Microsoft.
I find it hard to believe there isn't some type of simple, thorough search feature. Are the people creating this stuff really that stupid?
This is for someone who can't tell the difference between saving a file on the desktop or in the documents folder. Meanwhile, they completely destroyed the ability to perform any type of meaningful search on a hard drive.
LOL. Love this quote in response to the above article:
You’re joking? Right? Windows 7 file/folder search is, at least, the most useless bit of an underdeveloped search parameter engine since windows 3.1. Delete Nero and remove the shrapnel with windows 7? Absolutely never. Same with Adobe, Windows Live etc etc etc. YOU WILL NOT FIND ANY C**P WITH WINDOWS 7 SEARCH.
You reckon XP search was useless? XP is probably the best and easiest and fullest configurable data searcher ever.
Thank God I have Windows XP and Windows 7 on different hard drives so I can use XP to search the Windows 7 drive for what I need to find.
Exactly what I was thinking. Windows XP not only searches and finds ALL files in the requested location, but it will also search inside of file contents. Windows 7 might do that if I change a bunch of advanced settings, wait a really long time, and pray.
I thought right-clicking the folder I wanted to search and typing in a filename was extremely simple and intuitive. Someone over at Microsoft must've thought otherwise, or didn't think at all which is probably more likely. 
