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Ever since Findfast was introduced over a decade ago, the windows file search function has been problematic. In the past, I just simply stopped the service (or in early operating systems just simply deleted FindFast.exe and it's related registry entries).
Is there a way to totally turn off indexing and force the search to always look at the folders and it's sub-folders?
Search doesn't find half the files it should, and the indexing doesn't appear to be "sticky" in that I find I have to re-index quite frequently and when it does it on it's own, programs stop responding for minutes at a time while it hogs the drives.
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Actually I have since disabled it and it does NOT hang when doing the searches. In fact the system slowdowns and hanging have all stopped since I disabled indexing. Yes, sometimes on the detached drives it is slower, but not terribly slow, and the machine is 10 time faster for other tasks (mainly office and web browsing which were slowed way down with indexing).
You can go to the properties of the folder, under advanced attributes and uncheck the indexing option. Or you can go to Control Panel/Indexing and remove that folder from the index. Or both. Or if you really wanted none at all, you could stop and disable the Indexing service completely.
Actually I have since disabled it and it does NOT hang when doing the searches. In fact the system slowdowns and hanging have all stopped since I disabled indexing. Yes, sometimes on the detached drives it is slower, but not terribly slow, and the machine is 10 time faster for other tasks (mainly office and web browsing which were slowed way down with indexing).
Hack how did you turn it off
Is there a way to totally turn off indexing and force the search to always look at the folders and it's sub-folders?
To disable Windows 7 indexing: Start | Control Panel > Indexing Options When it opens, click on the Modify button. Uncheck the hard drives that you want to disable indexing for.
Without an index, the manual search is much more likely to cause hangs. Perhaps you'd be happier if we could help you resolve the issue with the index system?
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