When Windows Search No Longer Works

I encountered an interesting problem the other day while troubleshooting a customer’s machine. He is what I like to call, a power-searcher. In other words, he uses his Windows search feature to locate files regularly.

The other day, he came to my cube complaining that he could no longer search for files. He did what I don’t recommend any user do. When he noticed the problem, he waited a month to report it. That made points number one and three from my 3 Ways to Make Tech Support Calls Less Painful pretty much useless.

I went to his computer and was playing around. It was interesting because searching for *.* in the root directory (c:\) returned files. However searching for *.* in any other directory, say My Documents, returned “Search is Complete. There are no results to display.”

Hmm, said me. I played around with multiple settings, rebooted the computer, tooled through Folder Options to no avail. However, what I did discover is worthy to be passed along as a goldmine tip… A tip buried deep inside Windows, not readily obvious and oh so valuable.

Simply turn off the Indexing Service from the services panel. All this service does is “read ahead” to make finding file quicker in the future. Depending on how many files are on the hard drive, this is likely an unnoticeable difference in time.