Windows 10 search not finding folders/files

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On my desktop I have a folder and some files which have a common part of a name on both such as the name of the folder could be Folder and the files could be called Folder/file1, Folder/file2 etc. Doing a search in documents or even drilling down closer(these folders and files are about 5 levels down, if I used the name Folder, I don’t find the folder or the files which had Folder as part of their name.

I cleared the search file and rebuilt the index and it still couldn’t find the files.

I have a laptop which contains the same files as my desktop. I opened explorer and keyed in “Folder” and they popped right up. The only difference in the machines is that the desktop has an upgrade to Windows 10 from Windows 7 and the laptop is a Windows 10 from scratch. I have checked the search ribbon on explorer and all options and other items are identical between the two machines.

Anyone have any ideas where to look???? Thanks in advance for any ideas.

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You said you rebuilt the search index. Did you double check what is set to be indexed at the same time?

--Joe

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Yes I did. I even added the drive that actually contained the Documents folder which the system is smart enough to know that the drive contained the documents folder so it removed the documents folder from the list when it added the drive. No change.

Interesting thing happened though. With all my frustrations, I restored to a C drive image from a week before to see what would happen. and immediately after the restore completed, I tried the search and it worked. So then I tried it again and it didn’t work. Even drilling down the folder tree to the specific folder which contained the files so I’m looking at them while I’m keying in the search argument and it still can’t find them.

So what the heck is going on?

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My best guess is you’ve found a bug. Try using the Feedback app to report it.

Joe

--Joe

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Thanks for the reply. I’ve posted to the MS forums so we’ll see what happens.

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Did some more experimenting after a hint from a Microsoft Forum post. I did a safe mode boot and did the search and was able to find the Folder and Files. Disabled all the services other than Microsoft Services and did a boot and was NOT able to find the Folders and Files. Does this mean something in the Microsoft Services is screwing up?

Also, one other difference between the laptop and the desktop computer I forgot to mention above is that the desktop is an upgrade to Windows 10 Pro and the laptop is a clean install of Windows 10 Home.

Does anyone have any ideas of where to go next?

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It is very difficult to find out what the differences are between the clean install and upgrade. Have you tried the search under a new account on the failing machine? Could be the user profile is somehow corrupted.

Unfortunately, perhaps you should backup your data and do a clean install on the failing machine. That is a lot of work without knowing ahead of time whether it will work or not but that may be your best bet.

Joe

--Joe

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The clean install is a pretty severe solution. I’ll try the new user and see what happens. In the meantime maybe someone will show up with a different idea. The problem I have now, psychologically, is that when i do a search and can’t find something I can’t trust the search so that causes more heartburn.

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You could try Everything Search. ( http://www.voidtools.com) I find it faster and much more complete than Windows search.

Jerry

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Just took a quick look at Everything Search. Problem with it is that it doesn’t do contents, only file names.

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The new User had no effect.

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Since the new user did not work either it appears the problem is in Windows itself. Have you run “SFC /SCANNOW” from an elevated command prompt?

Have you tried using DISM to check the system health? See DISM – Fixing Component Store Corruption (this says it is for Windows 8 but works the same in Win10)?

Joe

--Joe

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I ran SFC and it did report some errors that it couldn’t fix. I’ll look at your DISM stuff this afternoon, but I’m starting to get a feeling that there is a reload in my future. The thing that just puzzles the heck out of me is why I can find the Folder and Files in Safe Mode but they disappear in a normal operating environment.

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That may indicate a conflict with a driver. Only minimal drivers are loaded in safe mode. BTW, what a/v are you running?

Joe

--Joe

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Try disabling everything in the startup tab in Task Manager. Also, run MSConfig and disable all the non Microsoft services in the services tab. If the problem goes away, enable and disable things in groups until you identify the culprit.

Jerry

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I did do the disable trick everything except MS processes and it made no difference. I didn’t disable everything in startup but I will give that a shot tomorrow. As for A/V, if you mean display adapter, it is a Intel HD 4600.

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A/V means Anti Virus

Jerry

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Sorry about that, had a blank spot in the brain. I run Windows Defender with weekly Malaware Bytes and Herd Protect.

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This thing gets weirder and weirder. Just for grins this morning I did a search and the magic missing files showed up. I got excited, better than sex! So then I tried it again and they were no longer found. What the heck???

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This thing gets weirder and weirder. Just for grins this morning I did a search and the magic missing files showed up. I got excited, better than sex! So then I tried it again and they were no longer found. What the heck???

Sounding a lot like sxx

:cheers:

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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I think I might have solved the problem, looking good so far so I will share this in case someone else has the same problem. This thing was driving me crazy so before I went for the big reload I thought I would try some goofy stuff.

Since a reload of the index wasn’t doing any good, having done it many times, I took all my folders off the volume where the documents normally reside. I then removed documents from the indexing routine and substituted the drive letter where they normally reside. Then I did a reload of the index and of course the number of items fell from about 50,000 to around 10,000 because only my music and start menu and the other miscellaneous stuff that Windows includes had any data in them.

Then I formatted the volume to make it clean and get rid of all the dust in the corners because at this time I had started thinking I had a pointer problem and if I couldn’t force a clean reindexing a reload was in my future.

I then moved all the folders back into the volume and let the index start rebuilding itself with a couple of reboots in the middle of the process so it would have plenty of opportunity to restart the indexing process. I never put the documents folder back into the list of things to be indexed and just left the drive letter where the documents reside in the list.

So far so good. I’ll give it a day or two and see if it continues to work. I won’t restore the documents folder to the list, I’ll just leave the volume letter in there. Only thing I have on the particular volume is the documents folder.

So, thanks to everyone for all the suggestions. They were very helpful and though they didn’t specifically solve the problem they caused me to look at this thing from every different direction. Still don’t know why I could find the folders in safe mode and couldn’t in regular but as someone said there probably was a driver or process stepping on something else. Anyhow, thanks again and everyone have a nice weekend. I know I will because I was going to spend it reloading and customizing the machine and now I can go do something else.

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That is weird. Glad you got it working. Thanks for sharing your solution.

Joe

--Joe

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I am having the same problem. Some program files (.exe) are not being found by Windows search. Help files, folders, zip files with the same name do show up.
I have rebuilt the index, checked the file types and what folders are being indexed. For example, paperport (C:Program Files (x86)NuancePaperPortPaprPort.exe) returns
42379-Capture
Also, searches for Autoruns, process explorer and processs monitor do not return the correct results.

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All I can say is destroy the index as I noted above and force a total rebuild from scratch. That is what I finally had to do.

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All I can say is destroy the index as I noted above and force a total rebuild from scratch. That is what I finally had to do.

I have rebuilt the index from scratch but this didn’t fix the problem. Your solution in an earlier post included reformatting the partition which I can not do since the files reside on my C drive.

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Just hitting the rebuild button isn’t enough. I did that a dozen times to no avail. What finally fixed it for me was reducing the contents of the index by over 80% and then forcing it into a rebuild to replace the 80% and I rebooted several times during the rebuild process to further force it to work harder to rebuild the index.

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After a week or so of successful searching and I can still find everything, I’m going to mark this problem done and move on to something else. Have a nice weekend all.

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@jvnase

Have you double checked the search index settings to make sure all the folders you want are being included?
Are you sure you user account has access to the folders?

Joe

--Joe

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