Windows 10: Ms please bring back W8 search !!!

Hi there

I have to agree with other posters who say the current W10 search is an absolute DOG - also the fact that I can hardly read the start menu (text size for me too small and I've found no way so far of being able to increase the size of the start menu itself - other items OK though) makes it doubly useless.

For some W7 users who never used W8 here's what it looks like.

(Note I'm on a Linux Host so this is shown on a W8.1 VM in Unity mode on a Linux desktop) - but on a Windows desktop the search panel is identical. The dropdown gives you files, settings or everywhere and it works decently. The whole point of a search is that it should be easy to enter your query and the GUI should be clean and uncluttered.

Cheers
jimbo

:)

 

Windows 10 and Journal note writer

Before you go back to 8, it looks like they took out JNW from W8 as well , so going back won't help you! MS-- please bring this back!

 

Cortana search box and quick launch toolbar missing - SOLVED!!!

Please pause with the "it's fixed" replies. The issue with the Start Menu, Search, Cortana not working continue. Even 3 hrs on the phone with MS Support logged into my computer can't fix it. They have no idea.

These one off "fixes", that will not last, are not a solution to a major issue like this caused by MS release of an operating system before it was close to ready. Who's complaining about W8 now?!?!? Not me anymore. Give me the horrible back and I'll hush.
Off to the Apple Store today. I'm done.

 

That would be nice to have as an option at least.

 

Whether it's Windows 7/8 or 10. I gave up using Windows search a long time ago so the first thing I do after installation is to turn off windows search which is a resource hog, disable search index. Instead I use: Everything Search Engine . It is a small program, takes only ~2MB of RAM to run and the icon is always on the taskbar. You'll get an instant result for what you looking for from all drives in your PC, right click on it will take you directly to the file location/copy path/run, double click to run if it is an excutable etc.... In addtion, you can use regex for pattern matching and to narrow the search.

An example:

 

Hi there

The trouble with these third party tools is that you will get into trouble (or *could* get into trouble) if you use something like Ms's Storage spaces where the file system isn't NTFS but ReFs

Resilient File System (ReFS)

Now whether Windows handles the file system BEFORE the search application so it *looks like" a standard windows large NTFS directory I don't know - you certainly can't assume that it will.

I'm hoping to change all my HDD's to ReFs as soon as it's released and is tested properly. It's possible that apart from the servers W10 might also have this as an option for ALL the HDD's instead of just with the Storage Spaces.

Cheers
jimbo

 

How much ram does Win 10 search use?
Win 10 search is same as win 7 as far as looks

 

It's not the matter of how much RAM Windows Search uses but the way it works, it is system resource hog. When you first install Windows, Windows Search starts building its Database Index file (Windows.edb) and over time, this index file keeps growing. There are cases that it grows to many GB's (50~100GB's) and Windows Search will have hard time re-indexing, making your system slow and sluggish.

More about: The Windows.edb file grows very large in Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012

 

Have you tried the power user search (right click Start menu button)?

or the taskbar search?

All searches on my Hyper-V guest seem to be fast enough, although I haven't checked the results (what is returned) too closely.
I also haven't tried the search tags or other query syntax. I think I'll look in Control Panel to see what search options are available on folders. Or... poke around on the modern side.

Side note: I dug around in Windows 7 and found the Windows Metrics registry entries, but nothing I tried seemed to help the start menu text size. Must be somewhere in the new DPI control settings. If I discover anything, I'll let you know.

 

Hi,

Go to PC settings - PC and Devices - Display - More options - Change text size to larger.

 

Hi,

I can't really comment on Windows TP search because I haven't tried it.
But I can report that Agent Ransack works as well in Windows TP as it has in every other OS I've used it in.

I've used it for years, it's much better then the built in Windows search and it adds itself to the right click drop down list in File Explorer so it's just as easy to access and any built in search engine.

It has many handy features and the search term is persistent so you can type in what you are looking for and then quickly search a series of locations just by clicking on them and clicking search.

Best of all it's free, and has never crashed or caused me any problems.

Agent Ransack - Download

Mike

 

Ok MS identified it as a problem, so if developing a new version would this not be a problem fixed? It seems major since 100gb is a lot of wasted space on any system

 

That is OK if you are only searching for file names and not the contents. There is no feasible way of searching contents without maintaining large indexes.

For example I have about 45k (very small) program source files saved as text files. If I want to find all instances where a variable is changed (that is in which files) I need to search the contents. In this case I need the contents indexed - not just the file names. Windows search works very well for this and apart from a day or so after installing I don't find the overhead too large. I would prefer more granularity though so you could say whether certain indexes were maintained immediately when a file is changed or whether they were updated later asynchronously or even only when a search required them.

 

Search is misunderstood - people index their entire system and that is where the index grows to unmanageable size.

The checkbox on the drive properties page ALLOWS file content to be indexed, but nothing is actually stored in the DB until you change Indexing Options. The only content indices in the DB should be files you want to search content - basically the four categories docs/email, music, pics, vids.

Libraries add a bit of a wrinkle bc they automatically add folders to the search index. But Libraries are misunderstood too *Wink

It's easy enough to manage the Search index, but it's also a bit of a pain in the arse. I look at it every few months to see what might have been inadvertently added by me or an application - then make adjustments (removing extraneous folders from the index).

It took me a while to understand Search and I'm sure I still don't use all of it's capabilities. I'll have to see what Win10 offers - is it Bing desktop, is it Win7 search, is it a new search?????