Windows Search

[ashleys]

Over the weekend I installed Windows 7 Professional on my old T30.
I upgraded the RAM to 2GB and installed a 250GB WD Scorpio drive.
This machine is now only used as a backup/test machine for my desktop and I thought it was worth trying
out W7 on the T30 before I attempted any migration on the desktop machine.

All went well apart from a problem with my incremental/differential copy mechanism based on XCOPY, which I've now fixed. Being a long time NT4/W2K/XP Classic user, I was surprised that I didn't find the UI culture shock bigger than I did

The one major outstanding usability problem is Windows Search.
On my XP machine, WDS 4.0 only indexes specific folders containing documents (PDF's and Word) and my Outlook pst. I make extensive use of Outlook Journaling to provide a Document Management system for all the documents and contact activity. With the WDS 4.0 Deskbar enabled, I can very quickly pull up a list and have it displayed in the fly-away window. For any long-hand searches, trying to find an .dll or .exe for example, I use search companion (without the cartoon canine )
Therefore, I can use the different search mechanisms for specific search requests.

It appears in Windows 7 that a new version WDS is now completely integrated into the system and Search companion is no more. This wouldn't be so bad but I've lost the deskbar capability. Why on earth should I have to go into Start -> Search, when the WDS 4.0 deskbar was ready and there to use in XP ?

Does anyone know if I can get the Search deskbar back and additionally, is Search companion available as an alternate interface whlist still being able to use WDS ?

Thanks.

[GomJabbar]

I am no expert on Windows 7 search methods by any means, but I believe I read that you can create a folder and set up a default search method for that folder.

See this for some options:
http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/window ... iques.aspx

[ashleys]

I already do something similar to that on XP.
I've got a DOS batch file that fires off a search request to an Outlook folder so I can see which bills are due this month and that haven't been paid

As a temporary measure on W7 while I'm testing, I've set up a Library that includes just my PDF and Word folders. I can then at least start Explorer and both look through the library manually or use the search dialog box on explorer. This may well be the way to go in the long run but it's just such a poor comparison to what I used to be able to do. The other failing of this approach is that I don't pick up the Outlook journal entries.