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

Nice to see the OP back after starting this thread way back on 27/11/2009!  And not looking a year older!

This gives me a suitable opportunity to say that I have the .php extension set up in Indexing Options/Advanced Options/File Types for full indexing of properties and file contents (plain text filter), and C:\xampp set as one of the included search locations.  I have just done a search for "mantra", which happens to be the theme I use in my test XAMPP/WordPress stack, and all the PHP files I would have expected have come up, out of my 424,794 items indexed.  Specifically, typing "mantra ext:.php" (without the quotation marks) did what I expected.   So I'm all right, Jack!

All I can add to what I have already said above are these few points:

1)  For Search to work properly, the three system processes SearchFilterHost.exe, SearchIndexer.exe, and SearchProtocolHost.exe must all be running.  (See Task Manager/Show Processes from All Users).  If not, try stopping and restarting the Windows Search service (in Services - it should be set to Automatic).  Sometimes services can get turned off or disabled for no apparent reason.  It takes a little while for all three processes to start up after restarting the service.

2)  In the Group Policy settings (enter gpedit.msc), there are Search settings in the following categories:

a) Local Computer Policy/Computer Configuration/Administrative Templates/Windows Components/Search, and

b) Local Computer Policy/User Configuration/Administrative Templates/Windows Components/Search.

In my case, all these settings are "Not Configured", with the exception of "Disable indexer backoff", which I keep permanently "Enabled".

This area is the only one I can think of where a corporate set-up of Windows 7 might be different from the corresponding home/home office set-up.

3. If you right-click on a drive entry in Explorer (e.g. C:) and look at the Properties, there should be a tick in the box for "Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties".  If you do the same on a folder on the drive, then select "Advanced", the box there for "Allow...properties" should likewise be ticked.  Usually this is the case though, so this is clutching at straws rather.

One last remark: Search seems to index PDF files only about as far as page 900, then it gives up!  It can find the first occurrence of "t.voldown" on p.880 of Stephen Prata's "C++ Primer Plus (6th Edition)", but not "RandomAccessIterator" on p.997, nor "Stepanov" further on.

This and my entries above are all I have to offer.  The size of my search index is now 2.2GB for 430,000 items, and Search seems to work pretty well considering the amount of data.

Thanks to all the contributors to this thread, and I hope all this has helped someone out there.

JMW

did anyone understand this?  where are you supposed to type in search? and where is a command change how windows searches????

screwy

 

To change how Windows 7 searches, try Control Panel/Indexing Options.

To find out about Windows 7 Search generally, try:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows7/products/features/windows-search

and see my posts above on 9 Feb. 2013 and 28 Feb 2013.

Not screwy.

Just to round off this discussion, I have found a phenomenal search engine called Copernic, which seems to be capable of scanning inside any file containing text, including PDFs and .php files, and finding results much faster than Windows Search, without apparently needing IFilters.  The basic tool is free, and can be found at:

http://www.copernic.com/en/products/desktop-search/home/index.html

It takes a while to do the initial indexing, like Search, but has an option to give the indexing maximum resources, so depending on your data, an overnight run does most of it.  After that you can change the option so that indexing takes place only when the machine is idle.

Copernic seems to index entire files; it passed the tests I mentioned above of finding "Stepanov" and "RandomAccessIterator" deep inside a PDF.  Not only did it find the relevant PDF very quickly, it also displayed the text, with the words highlighted, in the preview pane.  Words inside .php files were also located rapidly. The search syntax seems pretty intuitive - I haven't finished experimenting with it yet.

This could be the answer to most of the problems above; I would highly recommend trying it out.

 JMW

Finally…   If you have Acrobat 10, you can use the Full Text Index with Catalog function to index fully all the PDFs within specified folders.  Searching the PDFs with Advanced Search is then very fast and flexible, and the entire PDF is searched, not just the first 6 -7 MB as Windows Search does.

  JMW