Windows 10: Program files (.exe) not found by Windows Search

If you press *Start and type et.exe do you find it? Certainly I don't...

It is the search from *Start I'm talking about - perhaps these pictures explain the problem better.

Search in File explorer finds 6 instances of TreeSizeFree on my C:\ drive... It is not installed - it is a portable program.

From the *Start button search I get 5 - everything except the .exe (the top one highlighted in the picture is the shortcut I created).





Narrowing it to TreeSizeFree.exe gets nothing





Hope this makes sense now *Smile

 

Hi, Cortana search (including 'Find results in apps/documents/photos/') - whatever happened to 'My Stuff' - doesn't find et.exe at all- 'cos it's not indexed- which is why I gave up on using that long ago. And I hesitated over 'apps' - which apps? Terminology.

Cortana search relies on what's indexed as far as what's on disk is concerned, so is inherently limited ('useless' to me). I guess that's the difference you're seeing.

Wordpad.exe is found by Cortana search (indexed on C*Smile.

This degree of confusion and obfuscation is simply not what I want- normally to find things I use Locate32 (which, unlike Everything, allows GUI specification of where to search - in Everything 1.4 limiting the search range to a folder is a typed string including the folder path- or the search in Classic shell. Otherwise I might use explorer search for simple cases or simply typing on the file name list in details view.

 

Nope - indexing is not the cause here. You are correct if it wasn't indexed it wouldn't find it but in this case it is indexed. Indeed by default the whole of C:\Users is indexed except for %appdata%.

If you look at the picture in the post #29 above it finds everything except .exe and (except for the shortcut) everything is in the same directory so clearly that directory is indexed. This means .exe are either deliberately excluded or it is a bug.

I know there are other solutions but I liked to just press *Start and type to search...

 

I think this is intentional, otherwise all kinds of random.exe would show up when typing something into the search, such as command line programs and what not.

I believe the intention is that if you're going to search, you would use File Explorer to do so. At least that's my guess.

 

Just as you say, xxxx.exe in OneDrive isn't found by Cortana search.

TreesizeFree.exe is on your OneDrive....which is indexed by default. That location makes no difference.. I checked Cortana search with the following extensions:
exe, txt, xyz

Both txt and xyz were found, but not the exe, just as you say.
I'm guessing this doesn't fall into the limited categories of Cortana search as they are now explicitly laid out - which finds no exe's whatsoever, anywhere.

Nor did it find .cmd or .bat - but it did find .ahk

 

This search for exe works now on 1709 version.