Windows 10: Start Menu search not finding files

When I go to search for files (such as images/videos) through the Start Menu search (Cortana), files do not appear in results.
The only way I can actually find these files is to manually click the "More" dropdown and select whichever file type it is (photos, videos, music etc.) which is quite tedious.

I'm running Version 1607 (OS Build 14393.51) of Windows 10.
I have 2 drives, my C:/ which is an SSD and has Windows installed on it, and my D:/ an extra hard drive for storage.
I moved the User folders over to my D:/ drive, and made sure I did it properly, by moving it via Properties-Location.
It doesn't help if I move the file that I'm looking for over on to my C:/ drive, I still can't find it.

Please help, I have tried many many things and nothing has worked so far.

:)

 

Cortana (Start Menu Search) Not Finding Programs and Certain Other Files - Brand New Information

Hey guys. This is a niche topic, but I've had some major breakthroughs with troubleshooting an issue which has been present since Windows 10 first rolled out.

*Old Information:*

-

On certain PCs, the taskbar (Cortana) search bar doesn't return results for exe files, shortcuts and several other file types.

These solutions DO NOT WORK for this version of the issue:

1. Reinstalling Windows (may provide a temporary fix).

2. Re-registering / reinstalling Windows apps including Cortana through an elevated Powershell instance.

3. Rebuilding the search index with various combinations of settings.

4. Creating a new user account.

5. Turning on / off or restarting the Windows Search service.

6. Nesting shortcuts in various other folders.

7. Creating new shortcuts for existing apps.

8. Reinstalling applications.

9. Running SFC /SCANNOW.

10. Running Windows Search Troubleshooting.

11. Running third-party troubleshooting applications.

Additionally, if you open a Run instance and type in "search-ms:query=" with a query, you can easily see that **all** the expected filetypes have, in fact, be indexed. For some odd reason, some refuse to appear under searches.

The old solution at this point, was either to completely reinstall Windows and hope that it didn't revert (which it often did/does), or download a third-party application as a substitute for Cortana.

*New Information:*

-

Changing the default app for the file type affected (not appearing in searches) through the "Choose Default Apps for Filetypes" menu under System Settings, **does** fix the issue.

Particularly, I noticed that filetypes which were opened with specific **Windows** default apps, did **not** appear in the searches. Upon changing them to a third-party application, or even from "Photos" to "Windows Photo Viewer" (the new 'Metro' default Windows
App back to the retro viewer), made them instantly reappear in the searches.

**Important:** Upon changing the default program for the specific filetype **back** to the original program, the files **still appeared** in the Start Menu Search.

*Examples:*

-

.jpg files were being indexed, however did not show up in the Windows search box in the Start Menu. I changed the default application for opening .jpg files from "Photos" to "Windows Photo Viewer," and within a second, they appeared in the Start Menu Search.

.m4r files were being indexed, however did not show up in the Windows search box in the Start Menu. I changed the default application for opening .m4r files from "Groove Music" to "iTunes," and within a second, they appeared in the Start Menu Search.

*Conclusion:*

-

I have no clue why this is happening. Absolutely none. I'm currently continuing to troubleshoot the issue, but any help would be great. I see two main questions that need to be answered:

1. What is the cause - is it default apps (particularly the new ones)?

2. How can we resolve this issue for .exe files, and other filetypes which can't simply be reassigned to new default applications?

Any thoughts/help is much appreciated!

 

Cortana (Start Menu Search) Not Finding Programs and Certain Other Files - Brand New Information

This is a bit late, but I had similar problem with search not showing up programs and other things. I ended up using powershell to fix it:

Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}

You'll find a variant for this Get-AppXPackage, but they're missing -AllUsers, which is important on a multiuser workstation.

 

Use a free 3rd party software such as WiseJetSearch.

 

File/folder search from that box is, as I've commented many times, restricted to what is indexed. Further, it won't find executables (exe, cmd, bat...).

Don't use it for that. It's very poor and incomplete as above.
Ultrasearch
Everything (1.4b version)
Locate32 (older)

- free, 'instant', and covers everything on all partitions & disks in your PC (unless you restrict them).
- for external disks, they need to build an index (which is very very quick compared to Windows indexing).

The only benefit of Windows search is it can index text file content.