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I am just wondering what does Windows Indexing do? I run Windows XP SP3 Home at my place and was wondering special in Win7 what does it do?

I know it helps searching but how?

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Refrain from posting your age in posts. It's very unnecessary. – random♦ Feb 14 '11 at 16:37

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It helps searching by building a list of all of the files located on your system for faster queries. Essentially it is a small database.

Advanced indexing options is where the real nitty-gritty benefits of an index come into play. Such options include file sizes, access times, and even file contents depending on the file type.

Windows will index the most common user file locations by default, which you can modify to your liking. Be careful with this feature however, the biggest mistake is adding large locations to the index, such as your entire disk. Actions like this will cause very poor performance, so only index what you need ;)

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but if I don't index will search still work? – Benny Feb 14 '11 at 5:36
@Benny search will still work, although typically much slower. – John T Feb 14 '11 at 5:37
thanks. – Benny Feb 14 '11 at 5:38

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