Lyte Byte

One of my favorite feature in Windows Vista is the Search box when you click the Start button, which helps to search either an Installed application, Favorites, Browsing History, Files, Folders, OneNote and even the mails from Outlook.

With the release of Windows Search 4.0, the search and indexing are even faster than before. It also includes other performance and reliability improvements. The notable features of Windows Search 4.0 is the remote index discovery which allows PC-to-PC searches even across different operating systems like XP and Vista. (More about Windows Search 4.0)

To get a better utilization of the Windows Search, the files and folders must be indexed to be shown in the search results. By default not all folders are not indexed and you may be required to index the folders that you use frequently.

So how to Index new Files and Folder locations?

Before how we index it, here is some tip. Don’t index the whole hard drive as it may slow down the whole process and it may not give accurate results. Avoid indexing unwanted folders like Program Files. Apart from the ones that are indexed by default, add only folders that you frequently use.

To index a new location, go to Control Panel –> System and Maintenance –> Indexing Options.

Click Modify –> Click Show all locations at the bottom. Choose the locations that you want to index and Click OK and Close.

To remove any indexed locations, just use the same procedure as above. Click Modify and uncheck the locations.