How Bad Can a Search Feature Be?

We've spent a fair amount of time recently taking a look at Microsoft search software, both "enterprise" and "desktop." It seemed like a good idea to take a breather from our analysis of Search Server 2008, an enterprise search tool, and share with you why the subject of desktop search has become particularly important as organizations roll out Windows Vista.

Say you have a need to find all the files on your C: drive that contain the string "hosts" in the filename. Sounds simple, but in Vista, the process is actually ludicrously complex. You open an Explorer window and type "hosts" in the search box at the upper right...  but you know (don't you?) that Vista doesn't automatically include system and hidden files, so you stop the search (click the X), click the Search Tools button, and click Search Pane. Then, on the Search Pane, click the arrow next to Advanced Search. Here, you can select the checkbox labeled "Include non-indexed, hidden, and system files (might be slow)." And then, you can click the Search button, to start the search a second time, but this time with the parameters you need. And that's if you KNOW what you're doing!

Whenever I teach tech support staff these steps, if they're new to Vista, they generally look at me with a combination of disbelief and nostalgia for Windows XP. It is truly hard to believe that Microsoft would make searching for a file containing a specific substring this difficult, especially when it wasn't so hard in the previous version of Windows. Sure, Vista searches are fast within the user's profile, which is indexed, but some of us need to venture out into the uncharted wilderness of Drive C: every now and then. By the way, it's quite a common situation for tech support folks to perform such searches... for example, when seeking out remnants of a virus or malware attack.

• Microsoft
• Windows Search