Why Vista search returns nothing?

Question

That's crazy but when I search something as silly as a string in some text files with Vista it never returns anything even I check including non-indexed.

It seems I am not alone:

http://www.askdavetaylor.com/search%5Ffor%5Ffiles%5Fin%5Fwindows%5Fvista.html

What the heck was wrong with the search function on XP? How was it a nightmare? Inquiring minds want to know, because Vista search sucks! I search for things I KNOW are on my computer, NOTHING shows up.

With the old search, If I searched for something, uhm..it found it. They should not have fooled around with it, it's crap now.

or

Windows Vista file search sucks! It does not find files that I know for a fact are on my computer. I've messed around with it just to see how bad it is - and it's really really bad. I'll put a file on my desktop "test.txt" and do a search for "test". Nothing. And yes I've made sure the settings are in place to search the whole computer.

What in the hell was so wrong with the find that came with XP? It's search for crying out loud, it's not rocket science.

Is there something to turn on to make it work ?

Answer 1

Its not completely clear from your question, are you searching for a file name or for text inside a document?

Windows Search only searches files and not whats in them, so if you have a text file with "hello" written in it, searching for "hello" will not find it unless it has "hello" in the title.

If you are searching for a file, check your file is somewhere that Windows Search is indexing. Put the file in your documents folder and search for it then, it should be found as the documents folder is indexed by default.

If you want to change where Windows Search indexes, search for "Index" (the irony =P) and open Indexing Options. This will let you change where Windows indexes. Anywhere that is indexed will be found using Windows Search.