Windows 7: Windows search - is it useless or is it just me ?

I have a lot of files on my USB drive that i want indexed by windows search. I have
added my drive to the list of locations to index (in "Change how windows searches"). I find that windows search will find NOTHING on my drive. I have a lot of ".doc" files and if i type "*.doc" it finds none.

If i remove my drive from the list of locations to index it does find the files but takes a long time (as i would expect ). A few other things ...

- My USB drive is formatted NTFS.

- If I right click on the drive, the "allow files on this drive to have contents indexed" is checked



- The indexing service is running

- SYSTEM has full access to all files on the disk

I have tried all sorts to get it working including ...

- Rebuilding the index using the REBUILD button in the IndexingOptions->AdvancedOptions dialog

- Manually removing the whole index, rebooting and then re-indexing

- Stopping and restarting the indexing service

- Leaving it turned on for the whole day with no user activity to give it a chance to build the index.


Thanks for any help/pointers

yes
no

:O)

According to some, windows search can be tamed, but...
Am using Agent Ransack when I really need to find something.

It's not just you.
Some people like Windows search, but it's not the best choice for me.

Try FileLocator Lite (aka Agent Ransack).
FileLocator Lite - Free File Searching Utility

It's free, easy to use, and doesn't depend on indexing.
I don't use USB drives, so I can't comment on that performance.

I prefer a vanilla system as much as possible, but this is one utility i recommend.

edit: 4wd beat me to it !

I myself like Locate32. Locate32