Windows 10 Search cannot find folders/files

[dpomerance]

On my desktop computer I have a folder and some files which have a common part of a name on both such as the name of the folder could be Folder and the files could be called Folder/file1, Folder/file2 etc. Doing a search in documents or even drilling down closer(these folders and files are about 5 levels down, if I used the name Folder, I don't find the folder or the files which had Folder as part of their name.

I cleared the search file and rebuilt the index and it still couldn't find the files.

I have a laptop which contains the same files as my desktop. I opened explorer and keyed in "Folder" and they popped right up. The only difference in the machines is that the desktop has an upgrade to Windows 10 from Windows 7 and the laptop is a Windows 10 from scratch. I have checked the search ribbon on explorer and all options and other items are identical between the two machines.

When I rebuilt the search file, I even added the drive that actually contained the Documents folder which the system is smart enough to know that the drive contained the documents folder so it removed the documents folder from the list when it added the drive. No change.

Interesting thing happened though. With all my frustrations, I restored to a C drive image from a week before to see what would happen. and immediately after the restore completed, I tried the search and it worked. So then I tried it again and it didn't work. Even drilling down the folder tree to the specific folder which contained the files so I'm looking at them while I'm keying in the search argument and it still can't find them.

So what the heck is going on?

Anyone have any ideas where to look???? Thanks in advance for any ideas.

 

[_Emi_]

On my desktop computer I have a folder and some files which have a common part of a name on both such as the name of the folder could be Folder and the files could be called Folder/file1, Folder/file2 etc. Doing a search in documents or even drilling down closer(these folders and files are about 5 levels down, if I used the name Folder, I don't find the folder or the files which had Folder as part of their name.

I cleared the search file and rebuilt the index and it still couldn't find the files.

I have a laptop which contains the same files as my desktop. I opened explorer and keyed in "Folder" and they popped right up. The only difference in the machines is that the desktop has an upgrade to Windows 10 from Windows 7 and the laptop is a Windows 10 from scratch. I have checked the search ribbon on explorer and all options and other items are identical between the two machines.

When I rebuilt the search file, I even added the drive that actually contained the Documents folder which the system is smart enough to know that the drive contained the documents folder so it removed the documents folder from the list when it added the drive. No change.

Interesting thing happened though. With all my frustrations, I restored to a C drive image from a week before to see what would happen. and immediately after the restore completed, I tried the search and it worked. So then I tried it again and it didn't work. Even drilling down the folder tree to the specific folder which contained the files so I'm looking at them while I'm keying in the search argument and it still can't find them.

So what the heck is going on?

Anyone have any ideas where to look???? Thanks in advance for any ideas.

Well in theory you don't need a folder to be indexed to be able to search and find something, it's just to have it in a database so it find them immediately.
but when you rebuild your index and you try to search it will not find any file unless it's indexed, so you wouldn't be able to test if it will find your find or not until you search. what about removing the index, the folder? doesn't it work?
I mean, when I have a folder indexed, and you exclude a subfolder, it really won't find it on search, once you remove the folders like "users" it will take a while but it will find the files again. so maybe it's something like that, that maybe the excluding stuff is interfering? once a folder it's on "exclude" it will really omit the files from been found. I tested it with a "movies" folder with only 7 subfolders with movies, I excluded 6, and when I search it only finds the movie folder I didn't exclude when I search by *.*
so you should maybe delete all the indexed list of folders and re-add them again? and be careful only necessary stuff is excluded?
I have seen selecting subfolders and then then the main folder gets strange, so maybe something like that happened, like I selected the main folder, then excluded some folders, then when I wanted to remove the folder, it added the ones that were excluded, I unchecked them, once I checked on the main folders, they were excluded automatically. you know, that kind of stuff. (I tested and fixed that problem by going to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Search\CrawlScopeManager\Windows\SystemIndex\WorkingSetRules on registry, and delete everything that was "excluded" by me or subfolders included individually on index. which sucks, it sucks we get this kind of problem on 2015 but I never index folders so not a problem for me, anyway owning the key, and then change permissions of individual keys to delete them wasn't that much time. then I rebuilt the index and everything seems fine and in order and no more automatic excluded folders, or included if main folder is unchecked, messy windows stuff that nobody really cares but I was curious about)

and where are you trying to search? on file explorer or taskbar Cortana search? I have noticed that doesn't find .exe and probably other type of files are omitted by it, maybe there is a setting to tweak.

you could also use ultrasearch which is free and does a great job. since it uses a nice way of giving you files immediately for all your harddrive, without having to index anything or anything.

also there is a troubleshooter for search, so maybe you should try it?

 

[dpomerance]

Thank you for your response, but I don't think the issue is with excluded items from the index. Did some more experimenting after a hint from a Microsoft Forum post. I did a safe mode boot and did the search and was able to find the Folder and Files. Disabled all the services other than Microsoft Services and did a boot and was NOT able to find the Folders and Files. Does this mean something in the Microsoft Services is screwing up?

Also, one other difference between the laptop and the desktop computer I forgot to mention above is that the desktop is an upgrade to Windows 10 Pro and the laptop is a clean install of Windows 10 Home.

Does anyone have any ideas of where to go next?

 

[julianich]

hey you can try KrojamSoft FilesSearch program... the easiest way to search files and folders.