Extending Launchy

Question

I am a recent switcher from Mac to Windows (long story, but suffice it to say those Laptop Hunter commercials are not entirely bogus). Anyway, I love Quicksilver on MacOS, and was stoked to find out about Launchy, but can anyone tell me the best way to make Launchy index more than just my Start menu? Quicksilver indexes basically your whole system, giving you access to just about any file, but out of the box, Launchy doesn't seem to do this. Can I just add C:\ to the directories in the Catalog dialog, or will this be overload, with all the drivers and .dll's and miscellaneous cruft in Windows? If so, what paths should I add to give me access to most, if not all, of my documents and programs through Launchy? Thanks.

Answer 1

The Start Menu should contain links to all of your applications. If it doesn't, then create a folder with shortcuts to your other applications and index that.

I would stick with only indexing your "My Documents" folder, and avoid indexing the whole drive. Launchy doesn't handle that as well.

Answer 2

avoid indexing the whole drive. Launchy doesn't handle that as well

agreed, i recommend Everything as 'file finder' and SlickRun as 'keystroke launcher', a far more powerful combination.

Answer 3

I would add:

C:\Documents and Settings

C:\Program Files

That should get most of what you want I would think.

Answer 4

The most powerful launcher for windows is Find and Run Robot. For more complete indexing, without causing any slowdowns or cruft is to combine it with the wonderful port of the linux locate command, Locate32.

Firstly, the heuristics for learning in FARR are much better than Launchy, still not as good as Quicksilver, but closer. FARR has some brilliant options, great alias system and a very powerful plugin mechanism. One of the plugins uses Locate32 to extend its indexing in a very light way to any internal/external drive.