Stay Away from MS Windows Desktop Search

[coreman]

I recently loaded up Windows Desktop Search (which I understand is integrated into Vista, which is another reason to stay with XP).

While I found the Search function to be quite nice, I was plagued with serious slowdown on my T41 (Win XP Pro SP2) because the program kept hitting the hard drive to index it, even when I put it into idle mode.

Even though the program was suppose to throttle back while I was using computer, it didn't do it very effectively. It got to be so bad that I finally (and very regretfully) had to remove it...

The primary suspect was a program called searchindexer.exe and while CPU usage was generally <20%, the continual HDD access just killed my productivity with other programs.

After doing some research and evaluation of other programs, I installed Copernic. I couldn't be happier now...GUI is much better and it doesn't integrate itself into all of my toolbars like MS Desktop Search.

But most importantly, it does "on the fly" indexing, meaning that it instantly updates whenever files are made, emails sent/received, etc.

It is one sweet tool...and much, much easier on my T41...

[Musti]

Strange, as these search beasts fully index only once, then stay dormant until you create documents/visit web pages where that indexing is almost unnoticeable. Are you sure indexing was fully completed? Sometimes it takes longer but once full indexing is done, the HDD is not hit hard afterwards.

Have you given Google Desktop a chance? I find it the fastest, though do not use it due to its eagerness to connect to different Google servers at different times. I'll admit the quick search is very very nice, as well as the sidebar.

[tomh009]

I have used Google, Copernic and Microsoft. All have their own downsides and own advantages. Old versions of the Windows Desktop Search would use up massive amounts of virtual memory. Last version of Google I used still wasn't very good at that. Copernic would report errors (and ask me to send them) after almost every search session.

In the end, I'm back to the Windows one, at least for now. The UI is better than the other two (IMHO!), the memory usage is acceptable now, and I don't have the CPU/disk utilization issues that the OP mentioned.

[christopher_wolf]

Have you tried X1, yet?

I don't like either the Google Desktop Search nor the MS one, a bit too much for too little.

[tomh009]

Hmmm, yet another one to try! Are you running this one? What are the pros and cons, before I invest a weekend in reindexing my ThinkPad yet again?

[coreman]

I have used Google, Copernic and Microsoft. All have their own downsides and own advantages. Old versions of the Windows Desktop Search would use up massive amounts of virtual memory. Last version of Google I used still wasn't very good at that. Copernic would report errors (and ask me to send them) after almost every search session.

In the end, I'm back to the Windows one, at least for now. The UI is better than the other two (IMHO!), the memory usage is acceptable now, and I don't have the CPU/disk utilization issues that the OP mentioned.

I also used Copernic before and took it off for the reasons you mention but the new version, that I am using now, is working quite well.

As for the slowdown from Win Desktop Search, yes...it was undoubtedly the searchindexer.exe that was causing the problem.

But this program is associated with Win Desktop Search program, which is a free download from MS (think it used to be called "Lookout" before MS bought it to package into Vista) and not with the standard Win XP Search. I also had no problem wiht Win XP Search other than it was too slow and didn't include email attachments in the indexed files.

If you Google "searchindexer.exe problems" you will find this program is somewhat notorious for causing problems, both in Vista Beta testing and under Win XP for Desktop search.

The "X1" looks like an interesting program...

But I'll say again...the new Copernic program (Desktop Search 2) is worth a look...just as a comment, it doesn't seem to have indexed as many files as Win Desktop Search did, 31K files vs ~56K files for Win Desktop Search.

But so far, I've used it around 15 times with 100% success rate, and very very fast...

[christopher_wolf]

I tried X1 and I, actually, still have it (it was a close call). It has a very minor hit when indexing files continuously, I could even run a defragmentation analysis and reg scan at the same time it was going in the background without any visible performance hit such as file lag, drag lag, etc. It had a healthy interface when I first tried it, now I think they have made a few changes. Maybe it is just me, but indexing went pretty fast and the time it took to return results was near instant.