Searching network drives?

  • Thread starter Thread starter JaimeZX
  • Start date Start date
J

JaimeZX

Hello.

Still trying to figure out Vista as my work computer was recently
upgraded from XP.

In XP if I wanted to search a network drive for a file or folder with a
partial known name, I'd use the search tool and it returned results fairly
quickly.

In Vista, the network admins have indexing disabled for the network
because they don't want hundreds of computers constantly scanning for
changes. Which is fine, but now when I want to find a file, I *think* this
thing is scanning through every file, *name and contents* for my search term,
which makes it far, far slower. In fact, in the time it took me to search
this newsgroup, read about 10 posts, and then open this window to type my
query, Explorer has still not located the document I want. (I know it exists
because I was just looking at it from a coworker's screen.)

I *could* just ask him what the path is, but that wouldn't be "teaching a
man to fish" as it were. Would somebody please clue me into how I can search
file names only? Is that an option anywhere?

Thanks!

Jim
 
If you look at the Search tab via Control Panel > Folder Options then
there's an option for this ("Always search file names only") , if I've
understood you correctly.
 
Jon, thanks for the reply.

First, a follow-up - I let my previous search run all night and it still
didn't find the folder I was looking for.

I set the options to "search file names only" as Jon suggested, and it found
the folder in about 15 seconds.

I guess my second question(s) is(are), then, "Why is this buried in the
control panel? Is there a way to do it on the fly without digging into the
control panel? Is there a way to do this from the search pane?"

Thanks again!
 
JaimeZX said:
Jon, thanks for the reply.

First, a follow-up - I let my previous search run all night and it still
didn't find the folder I was looking for.

I set the options to "search file names only" as Jon suggested, and it
found
the folder in about 15 seconds.

I guess my second question(s) is(are), then, "Why is this buried in the
control panel? Is there a way to do it on the fly without digging into the
control panel? Is there a way to do this from the search pane?"
Click to expand...

Yw. Yes you can do it from the Search pane. If you press the 'alt' key and
then Tools > Folder Options from the menu that appears, then you can arrive
at the same place.
 
Right, right. Guess I was imprecise with my query. What I meant was, why
isn't this just a check box like it was in XP? (Rhetorical question, now.)

Jim
 
Right, right. Guess I was imprecise with my query. What I meant was, why
isn't this just a check box like it was in XP? (Rhetorical question, now.)
Click to expand...

Because the whole search interface was redone to work primarily by typing
in the search window, minimizing settings in dialogs. So, you can easily
restrict search results to file names by prefixing your search word with:

filename:
or just
file:

The new style of search takes a little getting used to, but having done
that, I much prefer it. A reference page for the new queries is here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/desktopsearch/technicalresources/advquery.mspx

Doug M. in NJ
 
Cool! Thanks for the link and the tip.

Still, seems *less* intuitive to me now because you have to remember tags
for the search bar rather than using checkboxes and drop-downs for the date
ranges, etc. Also doesn't seem like MS considered enterprise usage of the
search tool very well. Just MHO.

Thanks again!
 
Back
Top