[prettyvacant]

I have a Compaq Preario SR5310F PC. I just upgraded to Windows 7 (32-bit) from Windows Vista (32-bit). I have an external hard drive plugged into my PC. It kept most of my settings, such as defaulting the Documents folder in the Startup Menu to my external hard drive. This is the way I had it before and I prefer it this way.

My only problem is that when I click on the Documents folder, I am having trouble searching through my external hard drive.

For example, I click on the Document folder to open up my External Hard Drive. I have about a dozen folders in there (My Music, My Videos, School, Work, etc.). If I do a search in the search box it will only bring back results from the My Music folder. If I search for a file that I know is in my School folder it will immediately return "No items matched your search." Similarly, if I go into a particular folder and search within that folder...it will bring back "No items matched your search." In other words, I can go into the School folder and no matter what I type it will immediately return "No items matched your search." It's almost like it's not even doing the search because it comes back so fast with nothing. The only folder that the search feature seems to work on is My Music.

It's acting as if the only folder with any files is My Music, which is not the case. The only way I can get this to work properly is to go into My Computer. Click on the F:\Drive for my external hard drive and do a search that way. It's not THAT big a hassle but it was nicer before to just click on My Documnets and then search that way. I don't think the other folders are hidden because I've never gone in there and changed their status to hidden.


Any assistance would be appreciated.

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Hey Pretty,

When you're performing the search, are there options to drill down? I'm guessing that the My Music folder is selected as pre-set search location. A drop down list should pop up, where you can broaden your search. Does that option come up for you?

Cheers,
Kim
Windows Outreach Team

[KimE_WinTeam]

Hey Pretty,

When you're performing the search, are there options to drill down? I'm guessing that the My Music folder is selected as pre-set search location. A drop down list should pop up, where you can broaden your search. Does that option come up for you?

Cheers,
Kim
Windows Outreach Team

[phillipcorcoran]

The 'Search' tool in Windows Vista & 7 is not particularly good or user-friendly anyway. I use "Agent Ransack" instead, more user-friendly and faster:
http://www.mythicsof...nsack&page=home

Also, bear in mind that some external USB drives (notably those made by Western Digital) are relatively slow at reading, particularly if they haven't been accessed for a few hours. This will effect how long it takes for all the folders on it to be accessible to the system & will result in an initial delay when exploring the drive or performing a search on it.

Edited by phillipcorcoran, 08 December 2010 - 03:49 PM.

[prettyvacant]

Thanks for the reply, Kim. However, I have tried changing to folder and search options on the Documents folder but nothing seems to work. In fact, I checked and all the options are the same for this folder as with the My Computer folder. But when I go to My Computer and access my external hard drive the search works fine. It picks up any file I'm looking for, no matter what file type or what folder it is located in on my hard drive.

Phillip that sounds like an interesting program and if I couldn't figure out any way to get my search button to work I'd definitely try it out. However, as I stated, if I go to My Computer and manually access my external hard drive I can search through my hard drive that way. It would just be nice to figure out how to search via the Documents folders to skip 2-3 steps.

[Troy]

After upgrading, did you check that the Documents locations still actually point to the correct location - i.e F:?