Microsoft said:
Ok, I've been a computer pro for 20+ years. I taught myself 8086 asm.
I know 7+ languages. Why can't I figure out how to make the Search in
Windows XP work? Please help.
I gave up on the Search utility included in Windows XP. It only works
if there is a file handler that understands the filetype although I may
have no interest in looking *in* the file to search on substrings within
it but rather only search on file *names*. This was stupidity they
added in Windows XP. I want to find all files, not just the ones that
the Search utility happens to have a viewer to show the contents of a
file. I could be in a command shell and do a dir command to show a file
that Windows XP's search couldn't find even if I started the search on
that very folder. The Search in Windows 2000 worked fine. Supposedly
you could enable the file indexing service to augment or supplant the
Search utility but then you have to know SQL-like commands to do the
search in the indexing database. No thanks.
Instead I use Agent Ransack (yeah, not a great name; their paid version
is called FileLocator). It finds everything, plus you can select to do
the typical DOS wildcarded searching or you can switch to using regular
expressions for even greater control in how to search. The pro version
(FileLocator) adds a viewer to show you the contents of a selected file
but I didn't need that. Agent Ransack is free.
