Celegans wrote:
> "Andrew McLaren" <andrew@fakeaddress.com> wrote in message
> news:F2CDD26A-4309-4181-AB9F-6F80768180DA@microsoft.com...
>
>> "JethroUK©" <reply@the.board> wrote...
>>
>>> Despite Vista search being hailed (by Microsoft) as 'a main feature',
>>> Vista search has bugs - such that some things it simply can not find
>>> A search system that can not find 'some' things is as useless as one that
>>> can not find 'any' things
>>> Are Microsoft working around the clock to fix it? Will it be fixed by
>>> Monday? Am I the only person that thinks this renders the whole O/S close
>>> to scrap?
>>>
>> I'm inclined to agree. I have found Search in Vista to be very unreliable,
>> almost useless.
>>
>
> There's a Vista blog about "Advanced search techniques"
> http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/wi...echniques.aspx,
> but what's "Advanced" about not being able to find some files in Vista that
> one could find in Windows 2000, 98 or 95? Oh, I forgot, Vista search is
> fast even though it's flawed. Microsoft optimized its search for speed but
> didn't care about being correct or complete.
>
> The bottom line is if you work in a multi-platform environment (like Windows
> and Linux), or have a variety of scientific or special file formats (some
> programs even create files with extensions like .001, .002, .003, ...),
> Vista file search is truly worthless since it doesn't look at "unapproved"
> file extensions. "Unapproved" file extensions will never be searched or
> indexed. Once you find out something isn't searched/indexed you then need
> to tell Windows about that file extension so it's indexed/searched. You
> have to let each file type fail (assuming you know), and then you tell
> Windows about that extension. Then you do this again and again as other
> filetypes are discovered (unless you're all knowing, but then you probably
> don't need search). This is progress? Many users will think their search
> didn't have any hits before they realize the files are really there but
> Microsoft's Vista just can't find them.
>
> Windows Vista file search is simply AWFUL, unreliable, and I don't
> understand why Microsoft isn't embarrassed enough to fix it. But when has
> Microsoft ever been embarrassed by bad software? Microsoft can provide
> several ways of doing many things I don't need or want, but it won't give me
> one 100% reliable way to do one thing I truly need: file search. I don't
> need this every day, but I might as well throw away a lot of old files on my
> Vista machine since Vista refuses to search them. The example I gave that
> failed was finding an old Bourne shell script (a .sh file) that had the word
> "uname" in it -- I had archived this file under Windows. Vista won't
> index/search .sh files without some sort of software that knows how to deal
> with them. I'm not sure why there isn't an option to treat all other files
> as ASCII (or even binary) if they have an unknown extension. Just give me
> an option that says "search all files and forget the index". Let me use the
> fast search when it makes sense, but give me a way to find ANY FILE on my PC
> when I need to.
>
> It's truly unbelievable how hard it is to get Microsoft to listen
>
> C. elegans
>
>
>
You are SO right! I just loaded Google Desktop Search last night
because of the worthlessness of Vista's lame Indexing "service".
"service"! HA! that's a misnomer, eh??

Dave