LebGeeks

samer

Admin

Search Problems (win xp)

Windows® XP - Search Problems

Windows® XP has a known issue for not finding a number of File Types when you do a Search for Files "containing text" or using the "A word or phrase in the file" option.  This can be remedied for many file types, but not all.  The cause is the lack of a PersistentHandler value in the Registry for this type of file.

You can correct this by clicking Start, Run and entering REGEDIT   Navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT and locating the entry for the file type in question.  For example, .txt, .adm, .asp.  Expand the branch for that file type, and if the PersistentHandler subkey does not exist, create it.  Do this by clicking on the file extension key and going to Edit, New, Key.  Name the Key, PersistentHandler.   Click on the PersistentHandler sub-key.  In Regedit's right pane, double click on the Default value and enter the following (copy and paste may be your best bet):

    {5e941d80-bf96-11cd-b579-08002b30bfeb}

If the PersistentHandler sub-key does exist, do not change the default value.  This could have very undesired consequences.

Close Regedit and reboot the computer.  This file type will now be searched for "A word or phrase in the file" type searches.

Many users are switching to a program called Agent Ransack, www.agentransack.com , to work around Windows XP's Search limitations.

source: © Doug Knox

Ragnar78

Member

Re: Search Problems (win xp)

Good news samer...

Actually Microsoft worked out this problem for future releases of Windows (i'm not sure if it will start with Longhorn).
They are implementing an Oracle DB indexing type and SQL engine to support it.

This type of search will take by far less time than the one actually used. But of course this type of indexing requires some HDD space to build the Bittree.

darkstar

Member

Re: Search Problems (win xp)

yeah and that software provided is very handy i've using it lately!