Windows 7 Basic Search for a file - does it exist on Win 7 ?

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d8000

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I want to search my entire computer (or perhaps an entire drive or folder structure) for a file called abc.txt. So I navigate in explorer to My Computer (or a drive or a folder structure) and in the top-right corner of explorer, I enter my filename search term. Instead of just seaching for that file though, it wants to search INSIDE every file for that string. In the folder options there's a way to configure search, but all you can do is specify whether things are indexed or not. Nothing like in XP where you could choose to search "for a file" or "in files". Now it's just "in files".

How can I just search for a file ? Is it possible in Win 7 ?
 
Solution
In explorer right click on drive properties, general tab, clear the checkbox "Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties".

You might also be interested in a fast third party file search solution - everything.exe at:

http://voidtools.com/
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In explorer right click on drive properties, general tab, clear the checkbox "Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties".

You might also be interested in a fast third party file search solution - everything.exe at:

http://voidtools.com/
 
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Solution
patcooke said:
In explorer right click on drive properties, general tab, clear the checkbox "Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties".
Click to expand...
Thanks. I've changed that as a result of your suggestion. It doesn't seem to have helped. I just searched on my SSD C Drive which is only 78GB (37GB free) and it took half an hour to search for abc.txt. It's clearly still looking in the files despite me telling it not to via drive properties.

I'll look into the third party searches. Clearly Microsoft have lost the plot when it comes to searching. No idea what they're thinking.
 
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Hi

That's one feature of Windows 7 that really needs work.
I use Locate32, it adds Locate to the right click drop down, it seems to work pretty well but I still like XP best when it came to searching.

I have run searches in Windows 7 for files that I was looking at, after copping and pasting in the file name, and had it tell me that they didn't exist.

Mike
 
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Thanks Mike. If you think XP was better at search (like I do) try the everything search from voidtools as suggested before you in this thread. I'm liking it, thanks Pat. I never got on well with locate32. It was an improvement over Win 7 search, but this one from voidtools is a winner.
 
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Hi d8000

I'll try it out.
I'm not that happy with Locate32 either but it is better then Windows 7.

Mike
 
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Hey Mike, check out this free replacement for win 7 explorer: Link Removed
 
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Hi

Thanks for the link, I just installed it, I'll let you know how it works out for me.
At first glance it looks great.

Mike
 
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