How can I get Windows 7 to search for locations that are not indexed when I have no indexed locations?

I recently discovered what may be a bug or a serious error in the Windows 7 search engine, I'm not really sure of that.  Heck, it could be just that the options are formulated in a misleading way, and I don't realize.  Anyway slice you it, I have no sites indexed on my PC, or what I want, and I get no search results either.

My settings are, AFAIK, set up so that Windows Search will search by file names and content regardless of whether the location of the research is indexed but except if it is indexed it returns no result.  As a concrete example, I have a folder with 701 files it contains.  Of these 700 more than 400 files contain the letter 'C' in the name of the file.  When the folder is indexed, they appear in a search.  When the folder is not indexed appear not at all.

So, how to get Windows 7's search in unindexed locations?  I rarely use the search engine, in particular because it feels and is that it now seems to be, a massive downgrade on XP, but I still need it from time to time and I prefer not to index my PC just because Windows 7 will not search non indexed sections of my drives as it's a waste of given how little system resources I need to use it.

HM, this is regrettable.  Something to try...

Open the Indexing Options Control Panel, choose Advanced Options and click [Rebuild], which is supposed to remove and rebuild the indexes.  With the indexing service off, I could imagine that it would remove whatever remains of an index, you can have but not rebuild.  Which perhaps honest to the operation 'search the doomed drive already' goodness.

I go through this process when I disabled indexing, and done, I can search and find things.  Keep hope; It can work.

-Christmas

Tags: Windows

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