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Windows XP search improvement: suggestions for how to use the built-in search more efficiently, or for search programs to replace it

  • I need a search tool replacement for the built-in windows XP search, or suggestions for it. I have a lot of files on different drives in different directories (C:\AA F:\BB ...) and I when I want to find a specific file that I know is in one of those directories, I have to select and search each directory one at a time. (searching all folders on all drives would take too long.) Anyway to make this quicker?

  • Answer:

    I haven't tried it, but Google just released a beta of their new desktop search app. MetaFilter thread on the subject http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/36249.

Iax at Ask.Metafilter.Com Visit the source

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Eric Lippert is http://blogs.msdn.com/EricLippert/archive/2004/10/18/244195.aspx. Might be something to keep an eye on.

j.edwards

One thing I might not have made clear, I dont need to search inside the files, just for files names. but I have a lot of files. google desktop search seems pretty fast, but I cant figure out how to get it to index over network shared folders or just limit it to a set of folders that I want to search.

Iax

If you can handle doing it from the command line, install http://www.cygwin.com/ and use http://www.gnu.org/software/findutils/findutils.html.

mcguirk

http://www.think-less-do-more.com/avafind/ is free and searches the whole hard drive instantly. Filenames only. The only downside is that you need to pay if you want to index network drives.

smackfu

I'm quite pleased with http://www.copernic.com/en/products/desktop-search/index.html - it's free and works on network drives. It does index the contents of some files (office, acrobat etc) but also searches based on file name. You may be able to switch off the content searching part, I'm not sure...

chrispy

Thanks for all your suggestions!, copernic desktop does what I want, and its free. You can tell it exactly what directories you want it to index and what types of files to index.

Iax

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