Windows 7 search

Windows may have caught up to OS X in several areas (resume from sleep), but search is still way behind - must manually add areas to index, does not search in pdf files. This is because the extension for pdfs with Adobe Reader only works on 32-bit. You have to install the "Adobe PDF iFilter 9 for 64-bit platforms" to search pdf file contents.

Also testing search program FileSeek, which has more features.

Update 22 Feb 13

Ok I'm still having problems with Windows 7 search. It's appalling, in some important ways worse than Windows XP's. Let's see what's wrong.

• To find anything, it has to be indexed - you can't even search filenames if they're not indexed
• It indexes ridiculously few locations by default
• Even if it's supposed to be indexed, it isn't always indexed
• You can't force a search in non-indexed locations
• You can't force the index to update, only rebuild
• Cannot search inside pdf files
• It's giving me results for deleted files!

Together, all these mean it doesn't work most of the time. This is mind-boggling since OS X has had almost instant search without having to bother with indexing since Leopard, which is roughly equivalent to XP. 2 versions later, Windows still hasn't got it?

This guide is useful, but it still doesn't fix problems with the design of search i.e. everything depends on indexing.