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
    2010-07-13T15:33:15+00:00

    All I want to do is search for all files on my C drive without entering any criteria.  I used to do this all the time in XP so that I could sort by file size and clear some space by deleting big files that I'd forgotten about.  There might be a way of doing this in Vista but I can't seem to find it.

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  2. Anonymous
    2010-07-01T14:07:47+00:00

    You didn't read my reply. Windows 7's search works absolutely fine. There is no need to any third party utility. But you must ensure that the Windows Indexing includes the folders that you wish to search. I find that this is blistering fast compared with previous versions of Windows. If you have a particularly large directory, the initial indexing can take some time to complete, but once completed it will only need to index new or changed files.

    You did not read MY reply.  My comments relate to the functionality of Windows Explorer and the inability to search for text in any file that does not have the usual extentions such as .doc, .txt, .xls etc.  Create a text file with the extension .lan or anything else for that matter, put your name in it and try to use Windows Explorer for your name. No luck!

    Also have a look at Xplorer2 and tell me it is NOT a significant improvement over Windows Explorer for Win 7 which keeps sticking a few seconds everytime you drag a file to another location through the left panel and happen to pass over another drive letter.  

    I have never understood why Microsoft cannot and does not implement some if not all of the functionality people have to develop themselves because  the functionality is not offered in the MS product or did exist but was arbitrarily removed from it in newer versions. And I am talking basic and general stuff here, like Explorer.

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