Fix for Slow File Explorer Search

[ChrisGreaves]

.. Also, have you tried deleting and rebuilding the search index? That is often one of the first suggestions for attempting to resolve search issues.

Thank you JoeP.
Late yesterday I started rebuilding the index and walked away; the rebuild paused every now and then and then restarted and ultimately ran to completion. The process ran for close to an hour; it was not five minutes that I know.

This morning I tried (File Explorer) selecting "This PC" in the left pane and searched for *.doc in the search box. The green bar grew for about 30 seconds (next time I'll use a stop-watch) and reported 23,996 items , including those on SUBSTituted drives V:, W: and so on. A search on drive shows no *.doc, which is how it should be, but still surprised me that I have not yet stored a Word2003 document somewhere there!

Then I ran a check with Everything.exe. The search "ext:doc" returned 16,035 items, or about 2/3 the total from File Explorer, which makes sense to me, because much of my writing (DOCuments) is in web pages (W:) and my bonaVista pages (V:).

The Everything run time is non-existent because Everything searches not the drive, but the index database, in memory, so very fast.
The Explorer run time is especially inflated in my case because, I suspect, File Explorer looks up a table for each reference to a SUBST drive; the fan fired up furiously during the search!

This HP15 laptop has an SSD drive.
Cheers, Chris

[ChrisGreaves]

How have you encrypted T: ?I use Veracrypt and I have to stop and restart the windows search service after mounting my data drive, otherwise the index doesn't work.

Thanks Stuart.
My SSD drive has two partitions, the boot drive C: and the data drive T:. That drive T: is mapped via Veracrypt to the second partition on the SSD.

Now of course I am puzzled that (as I posted in my reply to JoeP) after this morning's power-on reboot the *.doc in my T: drive showed up with no action on my part. That suggests that the File Explorer index that I rebuilt late yesterday before shutting down the machine, has survived through to this morning.

I shall monitor the situation throughout today.
Thanks again, Chris

[BobH]

Addressing things in reverse order.

I see that there is UAC at play when installing software or using functions that can change Windows. What I don't understand is why the UAC panel displays every time I run Everything. Is it a run time program? Is it because it reads Windows indexes?

Chris, please explain to my old crippled brain how I might run as administrator each time I launch Everything? Seems to me that adds a lot of navigation to effect.

After having reorganized my internal disk drive space and created a new partition, defragged, recreated Windows indexes, and eliminated Bing and Cortana from searches, File Explorer still runs much longer than I remember it running in the past or I think it should. I'm referring to running searches from the search panel in File Explorer. Here is what I see when I press Enter after setting a search argument:

Search screen 2023-07-27_13h02_21.png

While I see some options to control the span of the search, I don't see one that controls searching contents or just file and folder titles. What am I doing wrong? I don't so much want to fix the issue with FE as much as I want to understand what I should know but don't.

[StuartR]

I think that Everything just searches file names, not file content. That's why I've never bothered with it.

[ChrisGreaves]

I think that Everything just searches file names, not file content. That's why I've never bothered with it.

Hi Stuart. Everything 1.5a handles content superbly. Advanced Search.

Especially fast with an SSD, I should add.

You might be interested in Content Indexing

Cheers, Chris

[StuartR]

Thanks for the info Chris

[ChrisGreaves]

I see that there is UAC at play when installing software or using functions that can change Windows. What I don't understand is why the UAC panel displays every time I run Everything. Is it a run time program? Is it because it reads Windows indexes? Chris, please explain to my old crippled brain how I might run as administrator each time I launch Everything? Seems to me that adds a lot of navigation to effect.

Hi Bob, I might be the best person in this thread to explain "Administrator" in relation to Everything, but that does not make the the best person to explain "Administrator" in relation to Everything. Your very best bet is to pose the question in the VoidTools Forums (which is phpBB-based, just like Eileen's Lounge).

Here are the basics as I understand them, but my understanding of the installation is limited. I have been focused on Using the program (searches, functions, modifiers, bookmarks, macros etc) rather than the installation.

(a) Run your Windows system as a standard user, not as Administrator. Everything 1.5a does not need to be run as Administrator.

(b) That said, Everything 1.5a runs in two parts: the front end user interface that we all know and love, and a back end which does run with Administrator privileges; I think of this back-end part as the bit that communicates with Windows on our behalf.

(c) Take a quick look under Tools, Options.

Untitled.png

I have both Administrator options turned OFF. Not On, and not shaded/ambiguous, but absolutely OFF.

(d) I think that you had been running 1.4 and are now running 1.5. It may be that residual settings from 1.4 are interfering with 1.5. To remove this possibility uninstall both/any versions using either the Everything Uninstaller or RevoUninstaller. Then reinstall 1.5a choosing default installations all along the way; that is, basically just keep tapping the <Enter> key. You may get one UAC request the first time Everything starts up, but you should not be getting a UAC whenever you use Everything after that. I don’t.

(e) If that fails then I suggest that you post a question in the Everything 1.4 forum. Void his-self will probably set you straight.

I have looked at installing and uninstalling Everything and have a couple of training modules written, but they have not been checked for accuracy so I am reluctant to hand those out.
Cheers, Chris

[Rebel]

Chris, I've been looking for version 1.5 but all I can find on the site is 1.4.x. And the "check for updates" tells me that I am up to date (with 1.4.1.1024).

[HansV]

Click on "In Development" on the home page.
This leads to Everything 1.5 Alpha
"Check for Updates" won't detect it since it is an alpha version.

[ChrisGreaves]

Chris, I've been looking for version 1.5 but all I can find on the site is 1.4.x. And the "check for updates" tells me that I am up to date (with 1.4.1.1024).

What Hans said. Also:-
Or click on the Voidtools Forum link in my earlier post. The first topic will take you to a page to get you started.

Untitled.png

Please don't be put off by 1.5 being an alpha version. It has been in alpha for over two years now, and to my mind it is pretty stable.
Most of the bugs found are hiccoughs in the latest new features, so nothing that most of us would ever see.

Bob: Are you able to post, in your own words, an example of the kind of search you are trying to do? If you can, I'll have a shot at setting up an appropriate search string to get you started.

Cheers, Chris

[Rebel]

Chris and Hans, thanks very much.