Overview

Do you have problems searching for text in files using Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008?  This problem has been affecting us in our development environment, but how can you fix it?

Context

From Windows XP, Microsoft changed the default behaviour of the Windows Explorer search feature.  They did this for performance reasons, and from Windows XP Service Pack 2 onwards you can choose to revert to the old behaviour, but the effect was that only certain file types are searched by default.

Solutions

There are two solutions:

1. Register a handler for the specific file types that you require.  This can be completed by installing an indexing filter, such as a PDF filter from Adobe or a compressed files filter.  See http://www.ifilter.org for various file type-specific filters
2. Enable search for all file types using a default handler for unregistered types

Installing a standard IFilter is as easy as running a setup application.

For the other options, the procedure is documented in this Microsoft article: Using the "A word or phrase in the file" search criterion may not work (Microsoft Support).

References

• Using the "A word or phrase in the file" search criterion may not work (Microsoft Support)

Versions

• Microsoft Windows Server 2003
• Microsoft Windows XP

Metadata

• Categories: IT Management, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Search
• Additional keywords: Indexing service, IFilter, Indexing Filter, Keyword search, Full text search, bug, kbbug, missing results
• Technorati Tags: IT Management, search, problem, Windows, Windows 2003, Windows XP, Indexing Service