search function in explorer yields no results?!

the start menu program search still works, but when I search in explorer for files I know exist, I get 'no result' ...usually. I mean, it's weirdly inconsistent. I can get results if I type in one or two letters, and I get incomplete results on other things (after finding a file myself, it showed up in search, while others with the same name didn't; a result got a hit as a folder title but not as all the files inside with that name).

I know [for some reason] Win7 search would never find "searching.doc" if I type in "rch" or "hing", so that's not the problem--I'm typing in the beginning of words.


I can only think of one correlation with this discovery of malfunction...

the other day I installed 'AbiWord' (from the '92-free-great-programs-windows-7' list) ...didn't like it, so I went to uninstall it.

...but it seems to have also been responsible for dumping a bunch of files on a non system partition (how it chose that directory, I have no idea!) -- what the files belonged to was listed on the CP uninstall list as Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistibutable blahblahblah (another one such thing is on the list currently, but with a different number at the end) ...because it had no business being there in my data partition I got rid of it. ...no idea if search was broken before I did that.

third-party search program Agent Ransack is able to yield the proper results (i.e., listing everything that fits the criteria)


is anyone familiar with this problem? (I suspect I could use a restore point and see if that fixes things, but I'd prefer to know what's going on before I do).

edit:
also, is there some way to delete/refresh search indexing? (maybe the index has been lost, or emptied or something... these searches that are failing to find content that _is_ there are in indexed locations)

edit: searching from an indexed subfolder fails to get the result (I'm almost instantly given a 'no match' answer), but searching from its the non-indexed folder containing it finds the file in that indexed subfolder (at 'already indexed' speed, no less). ...no idea what this means, just thought it was useful information.

It may be simpler just to use Everything Search and turn indexing off. That's how I'm running. When Everything first comes up it takes a few seconds to scan. Once it's running it gets notified of new files. The notification system is better than what Windows uses.

I think you'll like Everything. It runs in background in the tray. You can just kill it using the Tray Icon. For example before I shut my USB docks off I kill Everything allowing me to flush the drives in the docks. It's a stand-alone self-contained app.

Lykho said:

MilesAhead said:

before I shut my USB docks off I kill Everything allowing me to flush the drives in the docks.

what does that mean?

Search on USB docking stations. You stick cheap internal drives in instead of paying through the nose for external USB drives. Everything Search gets notified of changes in the file system. To make sure I don't lose any data, I close Everything Search before shutting off my docks with the drives. If you don't have USB drives hanging off your machine you don't have to worry about it.

See SysInternals sync.exe for more info how drives are "flushed"