How does Windows search

[teebird]

Hi All

I am having abit of a discussion with a work college about how Windows performs a search.

If there are 2,000 records in a folder with different and same modified dates - and I ask Windows to search on date modified eg. 01/01/2010 to 21/01/2010. I may do this many times looking for records with different modified dates.

1. Does Windows go through and look at each record individually each time and check if the date modified is in the criteria range. Thus searhcing 2,000 records each time.

2. Or does it remember from the first time it searches what records are and their modified date and then only looks at those records - which maybe 500 records.

Hope this makes sence to everyone.
I welcome all answers.
Cheers Tee.

 

[Diancecht]

I hope it has an indexing mechanism ...

Cheers,
Dian

 

[Sympology]

Have a nose here.

I personally turn index serivce of as it can slow a pc down.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms689718(VS.85).aspx

Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

 

[goombawaho]

Yeah, you don't need the indexing to have search working when you need to search for a file. I normally turn it off as well.

I also usually turn the search back to the old 2000 look

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CabinetState]
"Use Search Asst"="no"

AND

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ContentIndex]
"FilterFilesWithUnknownExtensions"=dword:00000001

set it to search for all files regardless of type. For example, by default, it won't search through .log files for a string of text (can be very annoying).


I was looking for a string of text in a log file which I KNEW HAD TO BE IN THERE, but XP refused to find it. The second registry file fixes that issue.

 

[teebird]

Hi All many thanks for your replies.
I tried to Windows Search but found it too resource hungry. Not sure if work would appreciate me changing the registry on their machine.
I was more looking for the logic behind how Windows searches in simple language as my work colleague is not very IT savvy.
eg if there are 2000 records Windows will search each and everyone for a mix to the search criteria. That 200 records is alot easier to search through than 2000. It's logic to me and you but not him..lol...

 

[Diancecht]

If those records are indexed, then there won't be much difference ...

Cheers,
Dian

 

[goombawaho]

Correct - regarding indexing in that it will search faster if indexing has been done. However, for me, the few number of times that I do a search, I'd rather wait longer than having some product (Google Desktop, Windows Search 4.0 or the built-in Windows Search) do indexing on a periodic basis and slow my computer down to a crawl.

It makes a HUGE difference on a PC that doesn't have much horsepower (RAM/quick hard drive/processor). If you have a Core 8 processor with 16GB of RAM, it's not so much of a worry.