why is explorer search so useless compared to 95 98 and xp

[DBenz]

Hi,

I created a .psd file two days ago, its on D drive.
I select D drive and go search *.psd and it starts searching before I even manage to enter a date range, this time I select one of their settings 'earlier this week' as 'yesterday' is probably too soon....and watch for a good 5 mins as the grey progress bar progresses slowly and hear the hard drive working merrily, it gets to the very end of the search progress bar window and still the HD is working, no results as yet, 2 mins later it finally ends, no results found.


I go to D drive, select the folder I was saving to, there it is at the top 2 days ago a .psd file


that is 'earlier this week' and not yesterday so why not find it ?


why wont it wait whilst I enter date range ?



Now why does it take so long, win95 98 xp would have found that near start of search. win7 never finds anything until that grey bar is at end of its 5 or so mins travel. I was dumbfounded when having fixed all the other stupid changes win7 made and got it like xp again, I was left with this unfixable issue. Classic shell just didnt fix this one.


what is win7 doing to take so long to find a file saved 2 days ago ?



DBenz

 

[johnhoh]

I know nothing about windows search other than to say Search Everything is way, way, way better. Instantaneous.
Downloads - voidtools

 

[Lance1]

I know nothing about windows search other than to say Search Everything is way, way, way better. Instantaneous.
Downloads - voidtools

YA! What he said.... Windows search sucks. I Never use it.

 

[RoWin7]

The reason is that MS constantly downgrades, each Windows being worse than the one before.

I've tried Everything, and it's super-fast, but I don't always compose the syntax correctly. I like Super Finder XT.
FSL - Super Finder XT

(OT--Lance, your avatar always makes me smile.)

 

[file3456]

I know nothing about windows search other than to say Search Everything is way, way, way better. Instantaneous.
Downloads - voidtools

QFT and I've been using Everything.exe since I don't know when. And being able to turn off indexing on the SSD is nice, too.

 

[Lance1]

The reason is that MS constantly downgrades, each Windows being worse than the one before.

I've tried Everything, and it's super-fast, but I don't always compose the syntax correctly. I like Super Finder XT.
FSL - Super Finder XT

(OT--Lance, your avatar always makes me smile.)

Just rock'n to my tunes man....

 

[Lance1]

The reason is that MS constantly downgrades, each Windows being worse than the one before.

I've tried Everything, and it's super-fast, but I don't always compose the syntax correctly. I like Super Finder XT.
FSL - Super Finder XT

(OT--Lance, your avatar always makes me smile.)

Did someone say Syntax???? Searching Everything HEY! You Asked For It.....

 

[RoWin7]

Yes, I've seen that guide. I don't understand many of them. YMMV.

 

[file3456]

Since we're on the subject of search, if you're wanting to search for text in practically any file, check out Fileseek. It's free with some limitations, but well worth it if you buy it. I use it all the time to search for code and what have you in files. It was how in large part I found certain code in the omni.ja file (after decompressing) to alter some things in my browser astetics.

My browser of choice is Pale Moon and I used to be able to mod some things through the omni.ja file, but now I can't with the latest version so I have to download the source, edit and recompile in Visual Studio. What a PITA.

 

[file3456]

Yes, I've seen that guide. I don't understand many of them. YMMV.

It's really not hard. If you're searching for a pdf and can't remember its name, just enter .pdf (with the preceding .). A whole list of pdfs will show up that are on your entire computer including any attached storage and you can sort by date modified, etc.

Searching for the hosts file for quick access? Just type in hosts, then right click it in Everything and open with Notepad++. Easy as pie. I guess I should say that the correct path for hosts is in the system32/drivers/etc folder. There are other hosts files that will show up.

 

[Lance1]

It's really not hard. If you're searching for a pdf and can't remember its name, just enter .pdf (with the preceding .). A whole list of pdfs will show up that are on your entire computer including any attached storage and you can sort by date modified, etc.

If you do remember it's name but can remember were you put the file you can narrow the search down even more when you're searching by file extension. Type to last letter in the file name along with the extension. For example if your searching for "my new car.jpg" just type "r.jpg" Click the "Name" bar at the top of the column to put the search into alphabetical order and anything with an "R" at the end of the file name with that extension will appear.

 

[ToughDiamond]

The search has got worse because Microsoft insist on changing stuff that ain't broke because they're scared it'll be seen as old and therefore might not sell. I hate the way the search results by default always include files containing the search term as well as files with the search term in the filename. Usually all that does is generate too many unwanted hits. Third party is probably the way to go. But I wonder if explorer.exe from WinXP would run in Win7? It would be nice to see that little dog again.

 

[Lance1]

The search has got worse because Microsoft insist on changing stuff that ain't broke because they're scared it'll be seen as old and therefore might not sell. I hate the way the search results by default always include files containing the search term as well as files with the search term in the filename. Usually all that does is generate too many unwanted hits. Third party is probably the way to go. But I wonder if explorer.exe from WinXP would run in Win7? It would be nice to see that little dog again.

It's been tried. This is a very interesting post from 2011. I read through it and would love to try what was suggested. It's very problematic and many things went wrong but I found it very intriguing too. Yes I know you can setup Win7 to look like WinXP but that's to easy. If you do try this!"Image Your System First!"

Windows XP x86 EXPLORER.EXE in Windows 7 x64 !!
​

 

[ToughDiamond]

Didn't work for me. I'm using Win7 32-bit in Classic Mode (gumball graphics are against my religion :devil. "The application was unable to start correctly (0xc0000142)" XP compatibility mode didn't help. Ran it by putting a copy on desktop and double-clicking it. Also tried putting it in the Windows folder where the proper one lives.

 

[johnhoh]

Didn't work for me. I'm using Win7 32-bit in Classic Mode (gumball graphics are against my religion :devil. "The application was unable to start correctly (0xc0000142)" XP compatibility mode didn't help. Ran it by putting a copy on desktop and double-clicking it. Also tried putting it in the Windows folder where the proper one lives.

If you clicked on it from the desktop it sounds like you were trying to load the old explorer on top of the currently running explorer. To start the old explorer without even running the current explorer, do this:

start > run > regedit >HKLM/Software/Microsoft/Windows NT/CurrentVersion/Winlogon, and change the value of "shell" to the specific explorer.exe you want to use, then reboot. Although that may produce the same result as when you replaced it in the windows folder.

 

[ToughDiamond]

If you clicked on it from the desktop it sounds like you were trying to load the old explorer on top of the currently running explorer. To start the old explorer without even running the current explorer, do this:

start > run > regedit >HKLM/Software/Microsoft/Windows NT/CurrentVersion/Winlogon, and change the value of "shell" to the specific explorer.exe you want to use, then reboot. Although that may produce the same result as when you replaced it in the windows folder.

I would think it'd be the same, yes. I suspect I'm flogging a dead horse, at least on my PC. Somebody was saying on that website that they reckoned it used other files.


Talking of XP utilities that work in 7, WordPad does. You haven't lived till you've seen how Wordpad 7 and Wordpad XP can destroy a .rtf document when it's passed between them a few times. No warning, just bye bye work.



Back on topic (more or less), another thing I miss about XP Explorer is how much easier it was to get the navigation pane to come and go. None of this Organise - Layout - Navigation Pane, just click a button called Folders. Of course they also had to change the name.

 

[Melchior]

I use a search program called Agent Ransack
Agent Ransack – Download – Mythicsoft