The Search feature in my copy of Windows XP seems to be broken in a strange manner.

Oddly enough, I have to click the search button in the start menu (or press win+F) *twice* in order to get the Search window to appear. Not sure what the significance of this is whatsoever.

Here's a screenshot of what happens when I do open it:
http://img385.imageshack.us/img385/4444/brokensearch1cd9.png

Note the weird search pane on the left, and the lack of a window title. The search pane is non-resizable and seems to contain absolutely nothing. Also, a lot of the toolbar menu options don't work, the Edit menu itself actually being completely empty.

Similar results are achieved when opening the Search pane in an actual directory; it brings up the weird Search pane, which is unusable. That is, of course, when it decides to do that instead of simply crashing explorer.exe first.

I also have NO idea what's up with the Cox Communications image in the upper right. In other Explorer windows, it's just the Windows logo. I do have Cox as my ISP but I don't know why that image is showing up in the search feature window when I've never seen it anywhere else for an extremely long time.

If you'd like a quick fix alternative try this free little program that uses next to no memory at all (I think around 300k). It's called "everything" and features super fast indexing of all files on your pc as well as easy searching.

http://www.download.com/Everything/3000-23...cdlPid=10890745

My windows search does work but I still use everything first .

You can type like .doc to find all documents, or search for the file names if you know them.

As for the COX icon. Perhaps COX is your default search engine so when you open windows search it refers to cox? That'd be my idea.

I think you can change that here but I am unsure as if it will help your search window issue.


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When you search the Internet, you can choose the default search service you want Search Companion to use.

Click Start, and then click Search.
Click Change preferences.
Click Change Internet search behavior.
In Select the default search engine, click the name of the search service you want Search Companion to use by default.
Notes

The option to change Internet search behavior might not be available in your language version. If it is not, you can change the default Internet search service by clicking Start, clicking Search, clicking Search the Internet, and then clicking Customize.
For information about changing the appearance of Search Companion, click Related Topics.

This post has been edited by AitrusSkyy: Oct 13 2008, 06:48 AM