Is there any way of getting the old Windows XP Search functionality in Vista?

Anonymous
2009-04-16T12:21:43+00:00

I find the Windows Vista search program to be absolutely horrible.  I just want to click Start, then Search (or Winkey-F), and then just choose the drive I want to search or enter a path to search.  Or, just right-click on a folder and have Search in the context menu.  Now I have to browse to the folder or drive, type in my search term, then I can actually get to some search options, after clicking search tools, then advanced search, then check the box to include hidden locations just to get to what would be the beginning search options screen in Windows XP.  This is annoying.

Then as it is giving me my 1000 or so results, I cannot just browse through them as they come up.  You see, as I am reading the results, it is inserting results above where I just read.  Because of this, it is pointless to browse the results until after it has finished searching.  I do not need this to sort on the fly. 

Suppose I am missing a column, such as file size or date.  If I add those columns, it starts the search over!  Powerful and Robust?  Maybe.  However, Microsoft should have considered ease of use when they designed it.

I am an IT Manager and usually would have no problems trying to work with new programs.  I have been running Vista for about 1 year.  This is not a transition like going to the Ribbon in Office 2007, where I hate it at first, then I learn to love it and never want to go back.  There is not much love coming from Vista Search.

So, does anyone know how to get the old search tool into Vista, or somehow get Vista search to behave like XP?

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Files, folders, and storage

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Anonymous
2009-06-29T16:57:31+00:00

Even the search capabilities of XP are horrible and unfortunately it has been carried over in Vista and W7.  One of the better solutions I have found for your problem and which also works in Vista and W7 is comething called Agent Ransack. ( http://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack/ ) It is a free file search utility. I have used it for 2 years and it does exactly what MS removed when XP came out.  I posted the following about this in the W7 forums with any useful reply. 

Hope that will help you out.

From my Win7 forum post.

I am running the RC version of Windows 7 and have unfortunately found no solution to the problems which started in XP and apparently have made their way into W7, at least I have not been able to find it.

Prior to XP one was able to search for text in ANY file type in any directory.  For some, as yet unexplained reason the search functionality in XP was arbitrarily limited to include only known document types such as doc, xls, html etc. There was a convoluted "solution" posted on MS's website to circumvent this major issue but even it did not work as advertised.  Luckily there were some people annoyed enough by this hi-handed change who took it upon themselves to develop something to do just that.  FindinFiles and Agent Ransack come to mind.

What is it about MS that makes them ignore the requests from MANY users over the years for a return of this feature.  Do people constantly have to develop new mousetraps for every MS OS because MS figures we do not deserve these features?

I develop software and if I want to look for text inside files in a directory or on an entire hard drive, regardless of file extension, then that should be MY prerogative and I should be able to do so.  It should be a basic functionality of ANY OS. Please give us that functionality back in W7

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Anonymous
2009-04-16T21:06:56+00:00

HomerTNachoCheese,

    There is not any way to customize the default search capabilities in Vista to make it look like XP.  There may be some 3rd party software that looks and functions like the XP search but none I can recommend.  Below is a link to Windows Search 4.0.  You may want to give it a try and see if you like the functionality a little more.

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  1. Anonymous
    2010-07-24T04:09:38+00:00

    > What makes Win 7 Control Panel a less useful control panel for me is 1.) The lack of being able to sort alphabetically or by category. 2. I want to see a list of everything, and that does not seem possible.

    Sure it is.   For one thing you can put  Control Panel  as a menu item into your Start menu.   That�??s how I use it the most.

    Looks like all you need to do to see one column sorted with it as an Explorer Window is  change its size so it is narrow enough that it won�??t wrap to more than one column.   Use Large Icons and then you can still have a usable Search bar.   I think having a generalized Search in all Explorer windows is one of the few good innovations in W7.   Oh.   I guess you would want to change its default open location to  All Control Panel Items.    (The window kept it size when I closed it but not the view I wanted.)  I�??m also seeing a few things greyed in the View menu so perhaps there is further tweaking possible via the registry?   Whoops.   Apparently this changes all Explorer windows too.  You would probably want to keep your F11 key handy then.   <eg>

    > (Even in) Vista we had the ability to switch to classic view which enabled sorting either by category or alphabetically and having everything there in one list. Doing this sort yielded (what is to me) a logical order of the utilities.

    That�??s one of the things I�??m seeing greyed, Details.  Also, only the possibility to have two columns, Name and Category with 0 pixels for each.   I can change those but not use it.   Looks like WIP?  ; )

    > Now in small icons view thet're in columns which are not sortable nor are they grouped according to any type of function I can figure out. They are just ...there, together in columns for some reason. Perhaps eventually I will see the logic of the grouping but so far it's not apparent.

    Try doing a search?   E.g. press Ctrl-e and type  disp   (for example)

    HTH

    Robert

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  2. Anonymous
    2010-07-24T02:34:39+00:00

    This actually belongs in another thread but asked and so answered: :-)

    What it looks like is not the important issue. What you can do with it to make it accessible, is.

    What makes Win 7 Control Panel a less useful control panel for me is 1.) The lack of being able to sort alphabetically or by category. 2. I want to see a list of everything, and that does not seem possible.

    (Even in) Vista we had the ability to switch to classic view which enabled sorting either by category or alphabetically and having everything there in one list. Doing this sort yielded (what is to me) a logical order of the utilities.

    Now in small icons view thet're in columns which are not sortable nor are they grouped according to any type of function I can figure out. They are just ...there, together in columns for some reason. Perhaps eventually I will see the logic of the grouping but so far it's not apparent.

    With the large (cartoon) icons there are categories which have to be entered into individually then backed out of to get to the next task; not an improvement in the way I like to work.

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