Windows 7 Windows Search is not working

pagey

New Member
Joined
Sep 27, 2010
I have recently purchased a Dell Studio XPS 8100 with Intel i7 processor and 8GB RAM, running Windows 7 Home Premium and preloaded with McAfee Security Center and Office 2010. I have copied across to the hard disk several thousand documents, mostly created in Office 2003, from my previous computer. I have tried to use Windows Search to find files containing selected words or phrases but, although the files exist, they are not found. I have used Indexing Options to ensure the appropriate folders are selected, the file types (eg .doc) are checked, and then reindexed. Each time I try to reindex, a different number of items are indexed – usually 0 or 2 or a few hundred, but still search does not work. This facility, which worked fine in Windows XP on my old machine, is very important to me. Please help!!!
 
Hello, welcome to the forum :) - I'm sorry you're getting a delayed reply.

Have you ensured that the Windows Search service is enabled and that Windows Search is turned on under Programs and Features?
Alternatively, you could try reindexing by deleting index.dat files which can be done with CCleaner www.ccleaner.com
 
Thanks for your suggestion. However I contacted Dell to try and solve the problem.
They took control of my PC for 30 hours (for the last 18 of which they provided no feedback). When I eventually managed to contact them, their next suggestion was to return the machine to factory settings. This seemed too drastic so I followed the suggestion on:
Link Removed - Invalid URL
and unistalled the McAfee software. Immediately indexing started working; within 4 hours 80,000 files had been indexed.

And can DELL, MICROSOFT and McAFEE please get together and sort this out!
 
It's not nessecarily caused by any combination of factors - including McAfee, but either way I'm glad you've managed to fix the problem..
Customer support with almost any manufacturer is useless.. so next time you're better off just searching around yourself. I sure hope they didn't charge you for those 30 hours?

Anyway, thanks for using the forum, I hope to see you around! :)
 
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