ThinkPad w500 - windows "flag" button has stopped working

[balanceact]

I just fixed an over heating problem by cleaning out the fan, BUT just before I fixed this problem, the search function of the windows button (with the rippling flag of four white squares) stopped working. When I type in the name of an file whose name I know exactly, it says, "No matching items found".

I'm not sure the overheating had anything to do with this. Is this a ThinkPad problem or a windows problem?? any ideas on how to go about fixing this?

Thanks, balanceact

[brchan]

Reseat the key cap and press down on the key firmly a few times. If that does not help, reseat the keyboard connector.

[axur-delmeria]

It's probably a windows issue, as the repeated shutdowns would have caused some data corruption. It's probably the index cache file itself, but since I'm using Linux right now, I can't provide accurate instructions on how to rebuild it. It's probably in Control panel though.