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Correct way to disable indexing in Windows 7

What's the best way to disable indexing in Windows 7?

All of the articles that I've found online instruct me to access services.msc and disable the Windows Search service. However, even after I did that, when I right click properties of my C-drive, I notice the "Allow files on this drive...indexed..." is still checked.

So should I uncheck that option and re-enable Windows Search? Or just uncheck it and leave the Windows Search service disabled?

How can I change the default filter Windows is using for indexing file contents?

In windows every file type is indexed using specific filters. Windows give an oportunity to change between two options for each file type in Indexing Options > Advanced > File Types:

• Index Properties Only
• Index Properties and File Contents

If the second option is selected every file type has certain filter that is default but I can't find how to change this filter without going into registry?

For example .html files have associated HTML Filter, problem is that this filter does not search everything inside html file as described here:

Filter components may ignore some text because of the format or content of the text. For example, the HTML 3.0 filter (Nlhtml.dll) ignores text that is contained in comments in an HTML file (for example, a file with an .htm or .asp extension) because the text is not displayed when you open the file in a browser.

That being said default filter for .html files can be changed to Plain text filter by changing HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.html\PersistentHandler\(Default) value to {5e941d80-bf96-11cd-b579-08002b30bfeb} which is Plain text filter persistent handler that can be found in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{5e941d80-bf96-11cd-b579-08002b30bfeb}\(Default) = Plain Text persistent handler.

Windows 10 search results appear in wrong language

I just upgraded to Windows 10 from a German Windows 7 installation. I switched my display language to English (United States) and my region to English (United Kingdom). Now whenever I search for some settings like for example "UAC", the search results will still be in German.

Not only that, but the results of some other searches, such as "language" are not even clickable. The only option that can be clicked here is the one without a settings icon.

I already tried removing German completely in the language settings, switched between German and English as my display language several times and also rebuilt the search index. Any solutions before I have to reinstall the OS entirely are appreciated.

Advanced search in windows 7 for only folder names

My folder structure is like this:

70-515\Chapter01\Lesson1-Exercise1-Completed-CS

70-515\Chapter01\Lesson1-Exercise1-Completed-VB

I want to search and delete all VB folders(including files inside them) inside 70-515 root folder.

But I cannot use Windows 7 search filters correctly, I tried the following searches and none of them worked correctly

"Folder: vb" , "Folder: *vb" ,....

I still have a lot of folders remaining.

Exclude directories from Windows Search by wildcard

Search Indexing is interfering with our build process, and I would like to exclude all instances of our dev directories from the indexer (we have a trunk and branches setup).
I could exclude the whole parent directory, but that would exclude too many files.

I can do it manually by deselecting each instance in the indexing options, but this is very manual and tedious.

I've found the rules in the registry at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Search\CrawlScopeManager\Windows\SystemIndex\WorkingSetRules, but I don't know if it's kosher to update that on the fly.

Is it possible to exclude directories from Windows Search by wildcard or some other less-manual criteria?

Windows Search Not Indexing Contents of Text Files With .SQL Extension

I'm having trouble getting Windows Search to index the contents of a text file that have a .sql extension. Is there something I'm doing wrong?

Background:

I use a program at work called Navicat which helps me to work with our MySQL database. When I use Navicat to edit and save queries, it stores them in .sql files which are located in Navicat's directory in Program Files.

Since Windows Search does not index files within Program Files by default, I added it to the list of indexed locations, as shown in the picture below:

I also went into the advanced section and added the .sql file extension and select the Index Properties and File Contents option. This sets the filter description to be Plain Text Filter:

However, whenever I do a search for text that I would expect to find within a .sql file, such as saw_order.Wo type:sql, it does not return any files. The search is successful if I'm searching for part of the name of a file, but never its contents with .sql files.

The .sql files are plain text files that can be easily opened and edited with notepad. Navicat simply adds some intellisense and a organization features, but other than that, it's plain text.

Why can't Windows Search see the contents of these files?

Do I need to add some special plug-in to Windows search for it to recognize these files?

NOTE: I am using Windows Search 4.0 and Windows XP SP3.

What adjustments should be done for a SSD?

I have recently upgraded my desktop PC and installed a SSD as system drive.

I read somewhere that these drives "don't like" being written on too much and that one needs to enable/disable certain OS features for such drives.

I checked the properties for the drive C: in Windows 8 and here's what I got.

Q1: As you see Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties is checked. Does it need to be checked for that drive?

Q2: Is there anything else that I need to change in the settings to accommodate for the SSD?

Windows 10 Settings not indexed

In Windows 10, when I search from the Start Menu or Settings, only Control Panel results appear, but not the new Windows 10 settings. For example, if I type "update", the search results are "Update device drivers" and "View installed updates"; "Check for updates" is missing. If I create a new test user account, it has the same problem.

This used to work. It broke when I reinstalled Cortana and rebuilt the index to solve a different problem, which was that desktop apps weren't showing up in search results, and/or after I removed C:\Users from the search index (I wanted more narrow indexing) but then put it back when problems arose. I tried a full reset of Indexing Options by setting HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Search\SetupCompletedSuccessfully to 0 and restarting the Windows Search service. It didn't help. Any ideas?

Why does Windows 8 application search no longer match substrings?

When I first installed Windows 8, I could start an app by hitting the Windows key once to bring up the Start screen, and then typing a substring of the app's name.

At some point since then, the "substring" part seems to have stopped working.

So now, for example, if I type chrom, I get, No apps match your search, but when I type the final e, up pops Google Chrome. Similarly, ie used to bring up Internet Explorer. Now I have to type the whole word Internet before anything is found.

Did Microsoft really change the functionality to make it much less useful, or is there just some setting somewhere that has somehow gotten twiddled to create this behaviour?

How can I force Windows 7 to REindex a folder?

I asked Windows 7 to index my entire "Media" folder. After it was done it'd find anything in there, no problem.

Then I reorganized it a bit and moved some folders around, and now it doesn't find things inside those folders anymore. For example, I'm looking at a folder with the files:

01. Ferry Corsten - Shelter Me.mp3
02. Ferry Corsten - Black Velvet.mp3
...   
05. Ferry Corsten - Made Of Love.mp3
...

I type in "Love" in the search box for the current folder, and it doesn't find anything.

I checked in "Indexing Options", and this very folder is checked off in there. It seems I just messed up its indexing feature. Any ideas how fix?

Trouble trying to use Windows Search to search for file with a question mark in the content

It seems that Windows Search is having trouble when I specify a question mark character as the content that I'm searching for within my files.

I've tried:

• content:?
• content:"?"
• content:"\?"
• content:\?
• content:%3f
• content:"%3f"
• content:\3f
• content:"\3f"
• content:\00\00\00\3F

but each of these yield no results when I do indeed have files that contain ? within the scope of the search. If I instead search for something like content:happy it will indeed find all files with the phrase "happy" within those same files.

My assumption is that Windows Search is treating some characters such as the question mark as a special character likely for the purpose of wild card expressions. To test this theory I've also searched for files containing an asterisk * and indeed I have the same issue as when searching for content of question mark. What I'm wondering is whether there is any way to get a search to work where I can search for a literal expression without any type of wildcard matching or at least a way to escape the special characters within the expression.

By the way I'm using Windows 7 Enterprise.

Windows 8.1 search charm slow, with explorer.exe CPU usage at 100%

Since upgrading to Windows 8.1 this weekend, the Search feature became pretty useless. When I start typing, it sends my CPU usage to 100% (Task Manager shows Windows Explorer as the main offender), and results are pretty slow. The funny thing is, I have a i7 with 8 logical cores, and this is one of the rare times a single program actually manages to utilize all of them at once. :)

Some searches which worked earlier (e.g. typing "devices" would bring out a "Devices and printers" link for the Control Panel) also aren't shown anymore if "Everything" is selected for searching. If I select "Settings" in the drop-down, then the "Devices and settings" link is shown, but it takes around 3s for the results to show up making the whole thing useless.

I tried disabling the Windows Search service completely (although it's not the one peaking the CPU), but it didn't help. Also disabled Bing web search integration in PC settings, but it didn't change anything (apart from the web results now being omitted from the slow search).

I have found a couple of similar threads online, but they don't offer any solutions:

• Windows 8.1 explorer.exe sends CPU to 100% when searching in Metro interface
• Windows 8.1 preview search charm loads 100% CPU
• Windows 8.1 search causes explorer.exe to spike to 100%

Does anyone have a similar problem, and possibly a solution to this problem?

Since I've accustomed to hitting the Windows button and typing immediately to start my apps, I am considering two obvious solutions:

• Reinstall plain old Windows 8 again
• Install a third-pary Start menu app with a working search functionality

Windows 7: Search indexing is stuck

When I open Indexing Options, it says:

4,317 items indexed Indexing in progress. Search results might not be complete during this time.

It's stuck at 4,317 though; no more items have been indexed. Worst of all, SearchIndexer.exe is taking up 100% CPU (well, 50%, but I have a dual core CPU; it's taking up all processing power it can). It is not causing hard drive activity though.

I tried clicking "Troubleshoot search and indexing" at the bottom of the Indexing Options window, but it couldn't find any problem.

I've also tried the repair registry key that several websites suggest; I change HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Search SetupCompletedSuccessfully to 0 and restarted the computer, and it apparently repaired because it flipped back to 1, but the same problem continues to occur.

It's reducing the battery life of my laptop and making it really hot so that my fans are running all the time. I've had to disable the Windows Search service. How can I fix this? Do I need to just flat-out reformat my computer?

Update:
I've tried rebuilding a couple times. There's nothing unusual about the locations I have to index, and I don't have any downloads in progress or anything like that. I don't see any reason why it stopped, and I noticed it much too late to do a system restore. At this point, I'm hoping someone will offer up some secret answer that will fix the problem, thus the bounty.

Another update:
I tried starting the service again, just to let it try yet again. It seemed okay at first (Indexing Options showed it operating at reduced speed due to user activity, and the number of files was going up). A while later I checked, and the service had stopped. Event viewer revealed some errors like this:

Log Name:      Application
Source:        Application Error
Date:          2/1/2010 7:34:23 PM
Event ID:      1000
Task Category: (100)
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      ricky-win7
Description:
Faulting application name: SearchIndexer.exe, version: 7.0.7600.16385, time stamp: 0x4a5bcdd0
Faulting module name: NLSData0007.dll, version: 6.1.7600.16385, time stamp: 0x4a5bda88
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x002141ba
Faulting process id: 0x13a0
Faulting application start time: 0x01caa39f2a70ec02
Faulting application path: C:\Windows\system32\SearchIndexer.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Windows\System32\NLSData0007.dll
Report Id: b4f7a7ae-0f92-11df-87fc-e5d65d8794c2
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
  <System>
    <Provider Name="Application Error" />
    <EventID Qualifiers="0">1000</EventID>
    <Level>2</Level>
    <Task>100</Task>
    <Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>
    <TimeCreated SystemTime="2010-02-02T00:34:23.000000000Z" />
    <EventRecordID>10689</EventRecordID>
    <Channel>Application</Channel>
    <Computer>ricky-win7</Computer>
    <Security />
  </System>
  <EventData>
    <Data>SearchIndexer.exe</Data>
    <Data>7.0.7600.16385</Data>
    <Data>4a5bcdd0</Data>
    <Data>NLSData0007.dll</Data>
    <Data>6.1.7600.16385</Data>
    <Data>4a5bda88</Data>
    <Data>c0000005</Data>
    <Data>002141ba</Data>
    <Data>13a0</Data>
    <Data>01caa39f2a70ec02</Data>
    <Data>C:\Windows\system32\SearchIndexer.exe</Data>
    <Data>C:\Windows\System32\NLSData0007.dll</Data>
    <Data>b4f7a7ae-0f92-11df-87fc-e5d65d8794c2</Data>
  </EventData>
</Event>

If you are having the same error and arrived here from a Google search, please comment or add an answer detailing your progress on this, if any...

Can I change the order of the search results in the Windows 7 start menu?

Is it possible to change the sort order of the search results in the Windows 7 start menu? I'd like to either have them completely unsorted by the type of result they are or have files appear before outlook emails.

I tend to use the search to find files that I want to open much more than searching for emails.

Start Menu search is very slow in Windows 8.1

Not sure what is causing this and was wondering if anyone else had this problem with any way to fix it? It takes about 2-5 seconds after hitting the windows key and starting to type for the search bar on the side to come up. The start menu will appear immediately and I'm running a SSD so I really don't think it is hardware. Thanks for any help in advance.