The proliferation of files is one reason why Windows Explorer in Vista, as a default, does only an "indexed search." Windows has to compile indexes of what files are on your computer, and then when you search it does not look at your drives to see what's there. It ONLY looks at the index.

Indexing is done as a "background process" and can only be done when the machine isn't busy. It may thus take several weeks for Vista/WinExplorer to finish indexing what you have on your computer - especially what you copy from an older machine or new stuff that you copy from another drive. Until the index is completed, Vista search will tell you - often erroneously - that perfectly good files (or nasty bad ones) do not exist on your computer.

By default, Vista only indexes "My Crap" folders, so if you put files anywhere else, the don't exist unless/until you change the defaults to force it to index the other folders. Also by default, it tends to not index hidden, system, and/or program files. This gives the lovely result that if you search for a file that might be part of some malware, Vista Search may inform you that it is NOT ON YOUR computer, when in fact it is there plugging away at destroying you.

Even if you change defaults to tell it to search "everywhere" and for "everything," the inability to find files known to be present persists.

While it is claimed that you can use "Advanced Search" to find things in the content of files, the most favorable comment I can make is "it doesn't work." After manually finding files I've searched for unsuccessfully, copying short text strings directly from the file and pasting them in the Advanced Search box, Vista still tells me the files can't be found.

Usually a search for file content on my computer should take several hours. Vista frequently, using Advanced Search to tell it to look everywhere, reports "no files found" within three or four seconds, and REFUSES to make a new char-by-char search - for any search string that contains ANY WORD that it claims already to have indexed.

Example: Vista refuses to find any file containing the word "Loser" - although I know I've used that word in at least a dozen files on my computer where I've tracked and documented unsuccessful searches for stuff I know is there.

Workaround?: DOS command FIND can look in files for specific text strings. The problem is that it shows/lists every file it looks at whether or not the search string is found. If the search text is found, it's "quoted" with the rest of the line where it appears.

One can port the result to a text file (FIND "textstring" > search.txt - althugh the "switches" require something a bit more complex) and then use Word to search the 12,000 page "search.txt" result for the original search string in order to find the files that contained it. (It only takes a few hours; but at least it usually actually gives you a result.)

Google does a better job of indexing stuff, but who cares if they find 23 million results when they'll only show you the "most popular" couple of hundred. If you're not into sports, politics, soap operas, or Hollywood fandom, you can't SEE any of the interesting (to you) results in what they've indexed. The ad sites along usually wipe out 50% of the reportable hits that might otherwise be useful.

John