Some files not indexed???

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I was looking for an MP3 file which is on my (fixed) E: drive (harddisk). Typed in a part from the title in the start-search filed but got no hits. The file is there (I checked). Also if I type the string in the Explorer search bar when the folder and the file are displayed, I get no hit (actually, anything I type here doesn’t produce a hit, there’s 2000+ files in the foler). I checked and the E-drive is in the search index. I also rebuilt the index but no changes… I must be missing something but what???

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Does Explorer spend some time before it tells you there are no results? I just now did this on my F: drive which has thousands of MP#s and it found the 97 items that included the text I typed in the search field in Explorer, but it took it about 3 minutes to find them.

By the way, the same search string yielded nothing in the Start menu. I think that there are some extra rules about what you can find from the Start menu, and it would appear that MP3s on an alternate drive are not included. However, any MP3s in your Music Library are included in the Start menu search.

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I was looking for an MP3 file which is on my (fixed) E: drive (harddisk). Typed in a part from the title in the start-search filed but got no hits. The file is there (I checked). Also if I type the string in the Explorer search bar when the folder and the file are displayed, I get no hit (actually, anything I type here doesn’t produce a hit, there’s 2000+ files in the foler). I checked and the E-drive is in the search index. I also rebuilt the index but no changes… I must be missing something but what???

Erik Hi and welcome

I assume you are indexing the folder where the mp3’s are stored. There is also a setting in indexing to search using different methods. might want to see which suits you best

Ken

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Erik Hi and welcome

I assume you are indexing the folder where the mp3’s are stored. There is also a setting in indexing to search using different methods. might want to see which suits you best

Ken

Yes, these are MP3s, not sure what you mean with different settings (I just need filename, not content and that is selected).

As answer to the ‘wait’ suggestion: nope, there’s no hits no matter how long I wait… It’s still a mystery…

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As answer to the ‘wait’ suggestion: nope, there’s no hits no matter how long I wait… It’s still a mystery…

Well, it is not just waiting. Rather, how soon do you get the “no files found” message? On my drive, I see a green progress bar scan across the Explorer address bar and when it finally gets to the end, or a while after that, the “no files found” message appears. And it takes a good 3 to 4 minutes for that to happen on a drive with 300GB used space. If the message appears almost right away (a second or 2) then there is something wrong that is preventing the search from even taking place.

By the way, search works even on non-index disks and directories, it is just that it takes longer. Checking the F: drive where I have my MP3s, the drive and the folders containing the MP3s are all indexed, but based on the behavior (the amount of time it takes to produce the result) I know that the MP3 file names are not in the index. That is one of the things that bugs me about all of the indexing services that I have tried – they never tell you exactly what they are indexing nor how you can fine tune the index. Usually the information that the developer of the indexing software has in mind is not the information that I think should be indexed. And I often curse the indexing engine for not finding things that I know are there. Which means I often rely on command line tools such as find or grep, and the text search capabilities built in my text editor; those tools usually locate what I am looking for.

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Well, it is not just waiting. Rather, how soon do you get the “no files found” message? On my drive, I see a green progress bar scan across the Explorer address bar and when it finally gets to the end, or a while after that, the “no files found” message appears. And it takes a good 3 to 4 minutes for that to happen on a drive with 300GB used space. If the message appears almost right away (a second or 2) then there is something wrong that is preventing the search from even taking place.

By the way, search works even on non-index disks and directories, it is just that it takes longer. Checking the F: drive where I have my MP3s, the drive and the folders containing the MP3s are all indexed, but based on the behavior (the amount of time it takes to produce the result) I know that the MP3 file names are not in the index. That is one of the things that bugs me about all of the indexing services that I have tried – they never tell you exactly what they are indexing nor how you can fine tune the index. Usually the information that the developer of the indexing software has in mind is not the information that I think should be indexed. And I often curse the indexing engine for not finding things that I know are there. Which means I often rely on command line tools such as find or grep, and the text search capabilities built in my text editor; those tools usually locate what I am looking for.

I do get the green bar sometimes, but it seems that once it’s “done it” the next time I visit the folder it’s not done (which seems OK).

I went into the settings on Windows 7 Search and did find the place where one can specify what files are indexed and how. MP3s are there, no problem. STILL it doesn’t show them. Stranger still (did I tell that already?): if I search my whole system, it finds a file on an external HD (let’s say my T:-drive) but not on my local HD (my F: drive). That is odd as the T: is the one-on-one backup of the F: (and yes, the F: has exactly the same files as the T:, including the one I was looking for)… It almost looks as if there’s something going on with the folder on F: that makes it being excluded from the search & index (but mind you: I did also check in the advanced settings which drives and folders were checked and this one IS included, I even re-built the Index… which gave me a surprisingly low total count when it said it was done but no errors or warnings…)

It there a Win7 Search guru out there who can help us??

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My Windows search works about as well as yours does. I keep a folder on my desktop I named Desktop Clutter and I dropped a new PDF file into it. The next day I forgot where it was and Windows search couldn’t find it. I gave up and opened my Everything Search program and as always, Bam, there it was. I have yet to have it fail to instantly find a file. And I don’t even let it run as a process and it still finds files anywhere instantly. I hate that I have to use a third party program for something like that, but in this case I highly recommend it.

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Not sure if this applys to Win 7 but on XP there was a thing where it would not search all files and there was a registry fix. Certainly works on all the XP machines at work.
Now this is a simple reg tweak you can apply if you know anything about registry.

EDIT: Just tried that here on seven 64 and it didn’t help. I search through all the manifests on a 64 bit and there are 12,893 of them. Doing this it found 44 files. Using something else I found 116 files searching content

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For those of us who still dabble in XP, could we trouble you to paste up the registry code you are referring to?

Thanks,
Rusty

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For those of us who still dabble in XP, could we trouble you to paste up the registry code you are referring to?

Thanks,
Rusty

I had it there and removed when it didn’t work here. May need to reboot since its a HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE key

Code:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlContentIndex] 
"FilterFilesWithUnknownExtensions"=dword:00000001

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I don’t think I did anything but now it seems solved and I can find all. Yes, I did check if indexing was complete before I strated this thread and it was. Seems now that all is indexed (and I see 10000+ files in the index which looks more like it … mystery!)

(Now my screen-saver doesn’t kick in anymore… that’s another thread I’ll start)

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