Trying to get Win7 New HD+OS to Search/Index T'Bird 31 Emails

Greetings - I've wasted countless hours during the past 6 weeks changing numerous search & index options and solutions for weeks with zero success. With the former hard drive, a Vista with upgrade to Win7, I had to make 'some forgotten-Grrrrr' modification to the Indexing Options which then brought up all TB emails, subject lines and contents, normal readable text.

This time I've tried so many, many things, don't know if it would help to outline them (very lengthy), but I could do so.

In a nutshell, the default indexing options which were supposed to work do not pull up the emails like it did before the crash. Those options were listed:

Imapmail
Mail
News
Start Menu
Users-excluding appdata appdata (for myself and default users).

(Clicked on Modify and confirmed that indeed those specific mail folders under my TB roaming profile were checked to be indexed.) Did not work! Because I had checked the text file type 'msf', those coded emails came up, which were useless, so I unchecked that file type.

I read a previous post here from years ago where Kerry had written to include AppData for the long outdated TB3. So now I'm rebuilding that selection again**. (At least a dozen rebuilds tried in vain with either wider or more targeted selections).

**Update to above paragraph: Selecting the Indexing Options in the list as Start Menu & Users\Catherine\AppData\ with each and every single check box ticked yielded zero emails. (msf file type which I had manually added is unchecked). There were 35,000 more indexed items this time than with the default mail selections and no msf file types.

Does anyone have experience with this please?

Thank you in advance from Catherine.

See if any of our search tutorials help: Click the link then click tutorial.

Windows 7 Forums is the largest help and support community, providing friendly help and advice for Microsoft Windows 7 Computers such as Dell, HP, Acer, Asus or a custom build. - Search Results for search

>>>>>Here's something interesting from your tutorial:
Windows Search - Configure and Use (year 2010 [still relative on a 64 bit for current TB31?]).


5) When you have made the required changes to the indexed locations, click the "OK" button.

Information
Even if you uncheck and re-check your system drive C: in an attempt to have it fully indexed, the following folders will always be excluded:

C:\programdata\
C:\Users\Default\AppData
C:\Users\[YOUR_USERNAME]\AppData
C:\Windows

>>>>>If this list is correct, windows would 'never' index TB emails since TB emails are in the appdata folder; but the index 'used to' flawlessly for 5 years before the crash, on every TB update. That tut is 4 years old; what is current now, please?

There is a comment from Kerry on here from 2009 or 10 where he included the appdata location for indexing on his TB3 (27 versions ago), which worked for him. Doesn't help me.

Some crazy piece of the puzzle is out of place; it worked beautifully for years 'until' the new HD, new Vista OS with Win7 upgrade, and copying the former TB profile folder (with all my emails) in the proper location into a clean install of TB.

I cannot figure out if this is a TB search integration issue or a Win7 issue! (or both)
Or maybe the index options are missing a particular file type?

I will be very grateful for any help.

Does anybody have any suggestions please? Should I have posted this in the Performance and Maintenance thread?

Thank you!