Windows 7 - Question about "Search" function

Hi,

I know I should not post to this forum, but I am desperate. I have Windows 7,
64-bit OS. I jumped to this over Vista from Win XP. The Search function is
completely different. I am trying to find the "index.dat" file, and search
turns up nothing. I go into Windows Explorer and I cannot find the History
file/folder, and it does not have the option to point to different drives.
Can someone help me find my index.dat file, favorites file, and explain how
to use the Search function in this OS? Thanks in advance.

press your windows start key [second from left bottom row] and just type
index.dat

--
John the West Ham fan

housetrained@hotmail.com
it works best when it is open." - Frank Zappa

Hi, Sheana.


This is not a Forum; it is a newsgroup.  But, sad to say, Microsoft has
announced that (1) there will be NO newsgroups for Windows 7, and (2) ALL
Microsoft public newsgroups - and the msnews.microsoft.com news server -
will be closed by October.  Microsoft says that there will be no MS NGs for
peer-to-peer support, only Forums in the future.  So go to
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx

and find the ones that you need.  Until it actually closes, THIS Vista
newsgroup is about as good as it gets for Win7 questions.


Correct!


It does not exist in Win7.


it is either VERY easy - or very hard.

Step 1 is to turn it on, if it is not already.  In Control Panel | Programs
and Features, on the left sidebar, click "Turn Windows features on or off".
On the next screen, do NOT check "Indexing Service"; despite its
right-sounding name, this is for an older service that does not work well in
Win7.  But scroll way down to Windows Search and be sure that box is
checked.  (It should be checked, by default.)

Then just give it some time.  Search works in the background, jumping out of
the way whenever we do anything in the foreground, so it can take several
days to build the original Index, especially if we have many files and
folders and if we do not give the computer much downtime but turn it off as
soon as we finish actively using it.  If we insist, we can click Control
Panel | Indexing Options and tweak the settings to fit our own system and
way of working.  But, as I said, it is either easy or VERY hard.  If we start
tweaking before we really understand how Search works, we may spend days and
end up with worse results than before.  And we may have to let it REbuild
the Index a few times.  It may be best to just live with the defaults for a
week or two before we try to "improve" it.

I have not found a good tutorial on how to use Search.  I tried, even during
the beta, and finally have it working OK but not great.  Some of its quirks
bug me a lot, such as its refusal to search in .pub files, so I cannot search
all those Rotary newsletters that I produced with Publisher a few years ago.
And it takes some tweaking to search the contents of .eml and ..nws files.

Good luck!  I think you will like Win7 - and many users also have high praise
for Search.  ;<)

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
rc@grandecom.net
Microsoft Windows MVP
Windows Live Mail 2010 (15.3.2804.0607) in Win7 Ultimate x64



Hi,

I know I should not post to this forum, but I am desperate. I have Windows 7,
64-bit OS. I jumped to this over Vista from Win XP. The Search function is
completely different. I am trying to find the "index.dat" file, and search
turns up nothing. I go into Windows Explorer and I cannot find the History
file/folder, and it does not have the option to point to different drives.
Can someone help me find my index.dat file, favorites file, and explain how
to use the Search function in this OS? Thanks in advance.

I think you will find it does, I have got multiple index.dat files on my Win7.
They are hidden files.

On 09 Aug 2010, "R. C. White" <rc@grandecom.net> wrote in
microsoft.public.windows.vista.general:


Yes, it does. it is a component of Internet Explorer and will be found
on every computer that runs IE, regardless of OS. I also find some
other programs that user their own file called "index.dat". MS Office
is one of them, apparently.

Hi, Dave.

Thanks for the correction.

Like Sheana, I got NO hits when I tried this earlier.  But now I see a full
page of "index.dat" files!  I must have turned on some switch since I tried
earlier.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
rc@grandecom.net
Microsoft Windows MVP
Windows Live Mail 2010 (15.3.2804.0607) in Win7 Ultimate x64



I think you will find it does, I have got multiple index.dat files on my Win7.
They are hidden files.

Hi, Nil.

Yes, as I said to Dave earlier.  I was focused on the Search function in
Win7 and when I searched my "Search" folder tree, I found no "Index.dat"
there.  So I should have said there is no Index.dat in Win7's Search, rather
than none in all of Win7.

I am glad you and Dave corrected my misstatement.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
rc@grandecom.net
Microsoft Windows MVP
Windows Live Mail 2010 (15.3.2804.0607) in Win7 Ultimate x64


On 09 Aug 2010, "R. C. White" <rc@grandecom.net> wrote in
microsoft.public.windows.vista.general:


Yes, it does. it is a component of Internet Explorer and will be found
on every computer that runs IE, regardless of OS. I also find some
other programs that user their own file called "index.dat". MS Office
is one of them, apparently.

On 09 Aug 2010, "sheana" <sheana@nospam.invalid> wrote in
microsoft.public.windows.vista.general:


I, too, find Windows 7's search function to be difficult and
frustrating. I like the free Agent Ransack much better:

1. What is the difference between a forum and a newsgroup?

2. I thought the MS Newsgroups were going to continue, only that the MS
Newserver was discontinued. Are the newgroups going to disappear in October
as well?

Thanks in advance.

also it retrieves ALL my .pub files!
--
John the West Ham fan

housetrained@hotmail.com
--
it works best when it is open." - Frank Zappa

On 10 Aug 2010, "sheana" <sheana@nospam.invalid> wrote in
microsoft.public.windows.vista.general:


A "forum" is usually considered to be a private discussion group that
is not replicated on other servers. More recently, "forum" often refers
to web forums, accessible only through a web interface.


A "newsgroup" is a discussion group that is accessible through NNTP
(Network News Transfer Protocol) and is viewed with a newsreader
program such as Outlook Express, Thunderbird, Agent, Xnews, etc. It
usually refers to the global newsgroup servers network Usenet, but
there are private news servers as well.



Yes to the former, no to the latter. The newsgroups will continue on
Usenet without Microsoft's participation.

Hi, John.

Please define "retrieves" in this context.

Does it search the CONTENTS of your .pub files?

I have been trying to get this to work for several years.  Since my 3 years as
editor of our weekly newsletter ended about 5 years ago, all those files are
getting so old that this search does not matter much anymore.  But it is
frustrating to know that certain words (names, mostly) are in there but
Windows Search says there are no hits.  I am pretty sure that I found the
proper filter for .pub at some point a few years ago, but with later updates
of hardware and software, I lost that filter somehow.

Do you have the filter for .pub files?  Or know where I can find it?

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
rc@grandecom.net
Microsoft Windows MVP
Windows Live Mail 2010 (15.3.2804.0607) in Win7 Ultimate x64



also it retrieves ALL my .pub files!
--
John the West Ham fan

Hello R.C.

I think I know the answer.  The index.dat files are stored in subfolders
of each user's AppData folder, which is normally excluded from searches,
even when using the Everywhere option.  If I first navigate to AppData in
Windows Explorer and then search on

name:index.dat

then the files come up, all eight of them.  I do not have to use Advanced
Search.  However, as Dave-UK mentioned, they are hidden files so the
option to show those must be enabled in the View tab of the Folder Options
dialog.

Doug M. in NJ

I have had satisfactory results with Super Finder XT
http://fsl.sytes.net/products.html

it is fast enough for me and it will search inside files.

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

Hi, Retroman.


Eight?  I got 26 of them just now!  And that was just with the Start key and

The mysteries of Windows Search are much too deep for me, even after 30+
years of computing, 8 years as an MVP, and participating in both the Vista
and Win7 betas.  And, of course, adjusting Folder Options is always one of
the first things I do when installing or reinstalling Windows.  The default
settings just do not make sense for most of us.  :<{

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
rc@grandecom.net
Microsoft Windows MVP
Windows Live Mail 2010 (15.3.2804.0607) in Win7 Ultimate x64





Hello R.C.

I think I know the answer.  The index.dat files are stored in subfolders
of each user's AppData folder, which is normally excluded from searches,
even when using the Everywhere option.  If I first navigate to AppData in
Windows Explorer and then search on

name:index.dat

then the files come up, all eight of them.  I do not have to use Advanced
Search.  However, as Dave-UK mentioned, they are hidden files so the
option to show those must be enabled in the View tab of the Folder Options
dialog.

Doug M. in NJ