dennis' blog

Since writing Searching in Windows (part one), I have been doing more research on this. All recommendations I have read state not to index full hard disks as I suggested because it will slow down the index too much.

The next logical question is how do I find files that are not indexed?

The Search in Windows Vista had an Advanced Search button, which would allow you to check the option “Include non-indexed, hidden, and system files (might be slow)”. I see no way to do this in Windows 7.

One way to be able to actually find a DLL file is to go to the folder it is in (in this case c:\Windows\SysWOW64) and then search for it. In other words, if you know where a file is, Windows can help you find it. Very helpful. Actually it’s worse, it will only help you find it in that folder.

It is very weird how difficult it has been to find a solution to this question. I figured out one answer myself:

dir c:\msxml6.dll /s

Has it really come to this? Do I need to revert back to what I last did in DOS to find a file while running the latest Windows operating system in 2010?

In part 1 of exploring the Windows 7 search I thought it was simply unintuitive but had potential. Unfortunately, after more research, things have turned for the worse. I can’t see myself relying on this search for anything. I will have to resort to Google desktop for file content searches and the command prompt or some other tool for file searches.

I have been running Windows 7 Ultimate x64 on one of my two main PCs for about 3-4 weeks now. I like it, it seems like an improvement from Windows XP and Vista (admittedly, I only worked on Vista part-time and only felt the real pain when having to figure out how to do things on my wife’s PC and my test virtual machines).

I really want to like the Windows 7 search. It certainly allows you to perform more, faster, and more thorough searches than previous Windows versions. It is also far more versatile. It’s just really unintuitive if you want to do anything other than the default. I want to try to use it as much as possible; sometimes new features turn out better than your first impression once you really use them.

Thus far, I ran into a couple of gotchas, and here are solutions to both:

• Searching full local drives

  I typed the file name into the search window for example:

  msxml6.dll

  Out of the box, this returned all documents containing that file name as text, but not the locations of that file on my PC, such as the Windows system32 folder. The problem was that the predefined libraries did not include my complete local hard drives, but only some predefined locations, such as My Documents, Music and Videos. As a programmer, I often search for the locations of specific files on my entire local drive(s), just to make sure I don’t have a stray copy in the wrong place.

  I added a new library named All Local Drives and added C: and D: (both local drives) to it. Now the search finds all copies of this file on both local drives, as well as all files that contain the file name as text.

  Caution: Your libraries are also used as default locations for the built-in Windows backup, so adding more locations as libraries for searches will also back up those locations by default. You can go in and change locations to back up in Control Panel > Backup and Restore.

  I had expected this to be automatic after adding C: and D: to my indexed locations in Control Panel > Indexed Locations.

  Caution: By default, Windows will exclude some locations such as the Windows and AppData folders from the Index and it’s quite cumbersome to even figure out what some of these locations are and include them. This really ought to be simpler!

  Update: It turns out that this issue is far worse than I thought. Please see Searching in Windows 7 part 2 for more.

• Filtering searches

  You can use a filter to constrain the search results to only display files, and not files containing the text. For example:

  msxml6.dll type:=.dll
  

  Now the search finds all copies of this file on both local drives, but not files that contain the file name as text.

• Searching multiple Exchange mailboxes

  I have a personal mailbox on our Exchange server, but I also have access to 2 additional mailboxes that I frequently need to find emails in. Windows 7 does not allow me to search these additional mailboxes.

  I had really hoped not having to install Google desktop on my Windows 7 machine (why use two searches if one will do?), but this item is a big deal to me and that was ultimately the solution.