Configuring What to Search

By default, Windows 7 Search is configured to search for both file names and the contents of files when searching indexed locations. When searching nonindexed locations, only file names are searched. For example, searching the %Windir% folder for log will return all files and subfolders under %Windir% that satisfy any of these conditions:

• The files are named "log" or "Log" (the function is case insensitive).
• The file names use log as a prefix. This means, for example, that searching for log might return logger, logarithm, or even fire-log (the hyphen acts as a word separator), but it won't return blog or firelog because these file names do not have log as a prefix.
• The files have the .log file extension.

To perform such a search, open Windows Explorer, select the C:\Windows directory in the navigation pane, and type log in the Search box at the upper-right part of the window. Note that the %Windir% folder is not indexed by default, so searching this folder is slow because it uses the grep method instead of the Windows Search service. (This method was used by the Search Assistant in Windows XP.) On the other hand, searching the user's Documents library returns results almost instantaneously because the user's Documents library is indexed by default and the Windows Search service simply has to query the catalog to obtain the results.

By selecting Always Search File Names And Contents (This Might Take Several Minutes) under What To Search on the Search tab of the Folder Options window, users can modify this default search behavior so that Windows searches for both file names and the contents of files, even when searching locations that are not being indexed. Note that doing this can slow down the search process considerably for such locations. A better approach is to mark these locations for indexing. Searching a nonindexed folder using Windows Explorer causes a yellow notification bar to be displayed that says "Searching might be slow for nonindexed locations: foldername. Click to add to index." By clicking this notification bar and selecting Add To Index, users can cause the selected folder to be added to the indexing scope on their computer.