Windows Search's Handling Of Directories That Are Not Indexed

Using Windows Search on Windows XP* to search for files in an un-indexed directory is clumsy at best. I've never been a huge fan of Windows Search (formerly Windows Desktop Search). I used to use Google Desktop search fairly regularly, due to being fairly disorganized and often having no clue where a particular file or email was. I have since become much more organized in the way I store and manage documents, source code, emails, etc. But still, when Windows Desktop Search was released as a standalone program I installed and tried to adopt it, assuming it would integrate more cleanly with Windows.

It seemed to serve it's purpose, but I found that it was extremely taxing on my PC resources when doing it's indexing. It seemed convinced the best time to do this was at startup, exactly when I want to be able to get my user programs up and running as fast as possible. This could be turned off quite easily in the settings of the original program, but doesn't appear to be anymore. So inevitably, I end up snoozing indexing whenever it comes on. When I used to have much of my hard-drive indexed, this would mean that the index was often out of date and therefore not very useful. So I reduced the directories that got indexed back to just "My Documents" and my Outlook Inbox. Which leads me to my next irritation, and the main subject of this post.

The usability of searching an un-indexed directory in Windows Search is fairly poor. I'll start by looking at a sub-directory in my c:\temp directory, which obviously is not indexed.

(This happens to be the source tree of Squirrel, a java-based SQL client).

Now I click on "Search", type "xml" in the input field, and click the confusingly labelled "Desktop" button (which should say "Search Desktop", or "Go", or something other phrasing that contains a verb!). I am greeted with the news that this folder is not indexed, and therefore I must use Search Companion or add this folder to the index.



If I click on the "Search Companion" link, it launches a new window and searches with the old-school puppy-dog built-in Windows XP search -- which works very quickly and finds all the files I asked it to.



My main complaint here is that requiring the extra action of clicking "Search Companion" seems very unnecessary. At the point that Windows Search realizes I am searching an un-indexed directory, it should transparently switch to using the Search Companion logic. As a technical user, I barely care that the directory I am searching is not properly indexed, and a non-technical user definitely will not care.
Secondarily, it is also annoying to have it launch a new window. At this point, I am so annoyed that I decide to uninstall Windows Search. I go into Add/Remove programs, find Windows Search, click "Remove" and, after progressing through a few default screens, see this scary notification:



Do I really want to cause trouble with what are apparently very critical Windows components? I quickly search and find that "removing WDS will not disable or impact any other programs or updates listed". So I power through the uninstall.

After the obligatory system restart, I do some quick tests to make sure that I can still do basic searching in Outlook and Windows. Searching in Windows has reverted to the old-style search:



Searching in Outlook however immediately shows me a dialog notifying me that I need to download some software to make Instant Search work.



(As a side note, there is no reason that the average Outlook user would have any idea what the "Instant Search feature" is, as this text appears nowhere in the UI. This is a subclass of usability issues that I should blog about: over-use of the marketing or technical names for functionality in a way that is not communicative to the user who doesn't have your product's glossary printed out.)

Although I can see where this is going, I click on the "Yes" button. This takes me to-- you guessed it-- Windows Search download.



I in fact did end up downloading and re-installing Windows Search, simply because I do like the Instant Search feature more than I dislike the performance issues and the clumsy searching of non-indexed directories.

Still, there are several improvements that could be made in a world where developers were plentiful and worked for free and Windows XP was still Microsoft's top priority.

Suggested Improvements for Windows Search

1. Indexing should be able to be scheduled just like virus scans and product updates.


2. Indexing should be improved to run at low priority by default, and should in general never impact performance in any noticeable way.


3. Indexing should not run at startup by default.


4. Searching in directories that are not indexed should automatically switch to Search Companion, without requiring additional user action.


5. Uninstall should present less alarming language about the effect on other components.


6. In general, programs should be aware that I just uninstalled the thing they are telling me to install, and skip that warning.

* I realize complaining about Windows XP isn't much better than complaining about Windows 95 at this point. The reason I am using Windows XP is... a long story, for another day

Updated: I added a bit more context about why I find the extra step to go to Search Companion unecessary - Thursday, December 2, 2010.