Getting around Win XP search limitations

Our organization is migrating from Windows 98 to XP. Behind the scenes XP delivers a lot of advantages over our previous operating system, but finally working full-time in XP has introduced me to some of the minor annoyances I'm sure many others have long since worked around.

Case in point: XP's revised Search feature. Not only has the interface become much more cramped and confusing (even after you disable the annoying "search pooch"), but when searching for text within a file, XP's Search purposely ignores a tremendous number of file types.

The good news is that we found a quick solution in Microsoft's online help system (Knowledge Base article #309173):

"To configure Windows XP to search all files no matter what the file type, obtain the latest service pack for Windows XP and then turn on the Index file types with unknown extensions option. If you use this method, Windows XP searches all file types for the text that you specify. To do this:
1. Click Start, and then click Search (or point to Search, and then click For Files or Folders).
2. Click Change preferences, and then click With Indexing Service (for faster local searches).
3. Click Change Indexing Service Settings (Advanced). Note that you do not have to turn on the Index service.
4. On the toolbar, click Show/Hide Console Tree.
5. In the left pane, right-click Indexing Service on Local Machine, and then click Properties.
6. On the Generation tab, click to select the Index files with unknown extensions check box, and then click OK.
7. Close the Indexing Service console."

Microsoft says this can affect performance of searches, but as far as I can see only because it now searches all files instead of skipping some. I'll take a slower, but more accurate, search any day.

Posted at July 8, 2003 04:11 PM
Categories: Hardware/Software