Windows Search 4.0 released. Shame it STILL doesn’t work
First of all, the truly inane “Did you find what you wanted” message is still displayed when nothing matched the search:
Of course that is just a minor irritation compared with another – show-stopping – feature. I’d reported before that the search tool seemed to struggle to find things at times. This new version still had that problem, so I decided to investigate. I created a new file – called xxx.wibble – in my documents folder, added some content and tried to search on that content. No matter what settings I selected, Windows Search would not find it. It turns out this is for a very simple reason. “wibble” is not a registered file extension on my machine and Windows Search only searches files with known file types. As soon as I renamed the file xxx.txt, the search found the content straight away. As far as I can find out, this is a hard-coded “feature” of Windows Search; there is no way to override it.
As a developer, I have a mass of files on my machine that have unusual, and non-registered, extensions. Some (think README files) have no extension. The fact that I cannot search these files with Windows Search means that Windows Search is not fit for purpose. So sadly V4 gets binned just like V3 did. Oh well, here’s waiting for version 5 (which might actiually be usable.)
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Exactly my experience.
Google Desktop Search does find what you want, but it messes with your system.
So when Search 5.0 comes out I’ll give it another try *sigh*
I thought – Oh new “working” search tool – nice!
No – PANTS and intrusive. So I went to Add/Remove programs and – low and behold – the entry disappeared but the search tool did not.
I HATE MICROSOFT.
Thank-you for allowing me a forum on which I could suitably vent my severe frustration…
Just add the file type “.” to the indexed file types and it will index all files.
You MS haters need to lighten up and do a little research.
Hi “Sigh”,
Thanks for the tip as it partially solves the problem of WDS not searching properly. By adding “.” to the set of indexed file types, I can now for example find files called “readme” on my system.
Sadly though your tip doesn’t solve the real problem. WDS still doesn’t bother to search the contents of all files, even after adding “.” to the set of indexed files. So regrettably I still have to stick with my assessment that WDS is not fit for purpose and will hope WDS V5 is released soon and that it actually works.
I read the above comments and I totally agree with all of them. but really, the problem is the name of the application is “windows search” and it doesn’t actually search until you read a lot of help files on how to make it do so, and even then it has trouble finding the files and folders you can see clearly yourself. Additionally, this is a program that replaces the old search with a more problematic one at best, and includes NO INSTRUCTIONS or WALKTHROUGHS on it’s USE, which means this program is early beta at best, not for use by people who have jobs. Microsoft really needs to get it’s act together before people start abandoning it for it’s recklessness as a core operating system.
I find the new search about as useful as “help” in any microsoft application. After wasting time searching an apps help I search the web to find the answer.
I tried searching for any file named “svchost”. It’s not to be found (but of course the file exists). I don’t care what anyone says like “well you just have to do some reading or research”, it should just find the damn file if it exists. Try adding c:\ or windows\system32 to the indexable folders (or whatever they call it). It still doesn’t work.
microsoft does in fact suck. Big time suck!
I’m sick of dealng with an inferior product/company. I suspect windows 7 will just be a vista redo. which means it will suck as well.
We use Search 4.0 on all of our systems to search the network and emails. But mainly the network.
I takes about 100 times longer to search network drives on Vista than XP. Apparently even though I tell every WDS4.0 computer to index the network drive, the Vista machines refuse to do so. The XP machines will search the whole index file contents in <1 second. Vista machines take about 3 minutes. Same settings. Its also strangely difficult to verify WDS4.0 is installed on a Vista machine.
Being the IT department here, it is my duty to keep an eye out for new technology that can help the company. So I tested Windows 7 after reading the project manager saying the search “just works” every time. It doesn’t. It is as bad at finding what I search for, as slow on the file content search as Vista. Windows 7, from my 3 days with it, is a small upgrade to Vista. On a powerful machine the performance upgrades are negligible and the new feature, they took away more useful features than they put in (supposedly the final will have features not available in the beta). The new features I tested were the last thing I would have been worried about.
Now I love Vista and Media Center… but Microsoft would be better off looking at the successes of its various operating systems rather than introducing half-baked new features into a product that cost hundreds of dollars. Vista and Windows 7 introduce new features that KINDA work but cost a lot, WDS 4 is an example of this. On the other hand Vista’s Explorer enhancements and Media Center both make my business and personal life way more easy and fun (respectively, respectively).
PS: We ran Google Search for a while and it works well on XP but wouldn’t run on Vista 64 and wouldn’t search Office 2007 files. That may have changed.
I thought 4.0 sucked. Mainly becasue it didn’t work. I would have a new XLS file created and saved. Then when I would try to search for it, 4.0 couldn;t even detect it. Yes I searched under everything. I uninstalled right away.