Windows 7: Search does not find files that it should, directory is indexed, and *.php included on the extension list

Thanks for the detailed reply.  I have actually gone through several reinstalls of the Windows 7 operating system for one reason or another, reindexed multiple times, and I've been watching this thread for over a year.  We are now running McAfee, but we weren't at the time I first started to have this issue, so I know McAfee is not the problem.  I've been into services for various reasons dozens of time, and have confirmed that indexing is running.  I have checked and double-checked the solutions in this thread (now about 4 years and 10 pages long).

If different people do pretty much the same thing and get different results, it is safe to say that there is a difference in configuration somewhere in their computers.  In my case I suspect there is something in the OS image my company uses, some corporate specific setting that wouldn't apply elsewhere.  But there is some solace in the misery of others; there are plenty of other people who are also still having the problem.

The one thing that most of the posters will agree on is that Microsoft hasn't been any help.  I'm pretty sure MS is suffering from the same delusion that most software developers and tech support people do.  They believe that they have a great product.  If they check this thread at all they will see some posts that say "problem solved" and that is the message that they take away.

In Start Menu Properties.....

Enable Search With Public Folders.

It finds everything now.

By Public it must mean 'Shared Local Folders'.

When I tried detailed searching on my 32-bit PC, it didn't work and rebuilding the index was extremely slow.  So I reinstalled Windows 7, and among the first things I did then was to install Adobe Reader (for the PDF IFilters) and set up search indexing, relocating the index to C:\WindowsSearchIndex. I  specified indexing of D:\Martin, below which is all my data (documents, music, pictures, videos).  (Because of this separation of OS and data, reinstallation is not such a big deal; I use the redirection property of My Documents, etc.)

I also went into the Local Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc, Windows Pro and Ult only I think, although you can also do this by editing the registry):  Local Computer Policy/Computer Configuration/Administrative Templates/Windows Components/Search, and enabled "Disable indexer backoff" to speed up the indexing.

I let it index overnight, and today Search finds PDFs by name and content, .rtf files likewise, just as I detailed above.  As soon as I finish putting the basic system in place, with Microsoft Office etc., I'm going to back up the system partition with EaseUS ToDo Backup, then I can revert to it if things start to deteriorate again.

So Windows Search seems to work fine on a fresh installation, but somehow goes bad subsequently.  Problem (sort of) solved.

P.S.  Installed MS Office, now Search finds e-mails by content.   Also searching by content of .php files works.    Q.E.D.

Hi,

I have just conducted the experiment, similar to what I did above for PDFs, of constructing several .rtf files (each containing a line or two of Shakespeare) and moving them to different folders under "My Documents\Office".  I then immediately searched for them from Explorer at the "My Documents" level, not really expecting to find them straight away.  However, Windows appears to have indexed them almost instantly.  Not only could I find them both by filename and by content, but when I corrected one (from "Unleash..." to "Let slip the dogs of war"), that was instantly locatable by content too.

 I searched using terms like:

 breach  [which was in a filename]

 slip type:rtf   [in the contents]

 heaven ext:.rtf  [in the contents]

 or just:

 ext:.rtf

 which latter found them all.

 So there is something odd going on here, perhaps to do with some corruption that occurs the longer Windows has been installed.  Rebuilding the index might help, although I know some people have tried it without success.

 I agree with you about Microsoft; they are no help, although the amount they charge for the OS, they certainly should be.  I suspect from the various fora I have looked at that MS actually don't have a clue either.  All I can recommend is reinstalling the operating system (ouch) and setting up and trying the indexing straight away.  If it works, back up the system as a system image immediately.  Reloading it is not such a terrible task if you keep your data on a separate partition.

Regards,

J M Ward

Just occurred to me: have you gone into Services.msc and checked that the Windows Search service has actually been started?  It should be Automatic, but may have got disabled somehow.