Windows 7 - Search in Start Menu broken?

Yeah I checked that too but all the settings were correct. Must have been an RC bug Plus, I upgraded from the beta, so some kookiness was to be expected.

I ran into the same problem over the past couple days with Windows 7 RC and finally dug into it some more.


1. End Task on EXPLORER.EXE from Task Manager.

2. Start the Registry Editor

3. Look for the following key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderTypes\{EF87B4CB-F2CE-4785-8658-4CA6C63E38C6}\TopViews\{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}

4. Rename the key so it looks like the following:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderTypes\{EF87B4CB-F2CE-4785-8658-4CA6C63E38C6}\TopViews\{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}.BACKUP

5. From Task Manager click on File | New Task (Run) and type EXPLORER.EXE and hit return.

6. Now try your search from the Start Menu again.

If the above process doesn't work for you, you can always put it back the way it was by reversing the process above.

I don't understand exactly what this key is controlling, but hopefully someone else can shed some light on why this works.

Hi I had the same issue, tried everything.. What finally worked for me was to restore c:\users\USERNAME\*ntuser* from backup.. Now search works again. Regards, Ben

Would like to report that I faced the same problem and I followed the instructions posted by TheBigGroundhog. I was very surprised that it actually worked.

I'm running Windows 7 Professional.

wow, that worked!

Yeah, that registry fix worked for me too. Don't know exactly why it worked, but I'm glad it did.

This works. Thanks so much, this problem was irritating me something awful

Hello all,

I had this problem some months ago and it was solved by this solution of renaming the registry entry.

Now I have the same problem again, but renaming the registry entry no longer works. I also tried the hotfix from microsoft to no avail.

I tried creating another user and the new user also had this issue so I deleted that.

Any tips?

Thanks all.

Hello Djlm,

You might see if doing a system restore using a restore point dated before the issue started may be able to undo and fix it for you.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Hi,

Sorry for the delay I was out of town.

I tried this, but there is only 1 restore available with today's date.

Best Regards