Can't search multiple local drives

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I often want to use search for several specific drives, but not all local drives. I have about 10 local drives (don’t ask why, it just happened through the years!). When I do a search, Start/Search/Files or Folders, and remove one or more of the drives from the list shown in the local drives part of the list, I get an error that says (for example) folder ‘Local hard drives (C:;D:;H:)’ is not a valid folder. Search wants to look in all the local drives, or only one local drive, but nothing in between. This approach worked hunky-dory in Win 2K. How do I search on more than one selected local hard drive when I don’t want to search all of them?

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Do you have the latest Windows Search installed?

Check out Windows Search Advanced Query Syntax and see if there is any help there.

Joe

--Joe

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The default search is XP is pretty shotty, indexing takes forever, uses oodles of resources.

What version of Windows search do you have in XP?
There is a newer version of search that followed in XP SP3 that is better, are you using it?
Indexing turned on and or refreshed?
Tried a 3rd party os search tool yet?

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I’m not familiar with Windows Search. I just in the last month finally upgraded to XP from Win 2k on my desktop. I’ve had XP on my laptop for about 6+ years but only occasionally use it. Is Windows Search a part of a regular XP Home install? I have SP3 installed. Windows Search is different from the regular scratching dog search, right?

Indexing is turned off. I try to minimize excess background processes running all the time and figured no more often than I run a search I can afford the longer times caused by not indexing all the time.

I had indexing turned off in Win 2k too, and as I said, I could search on selected drives with no problem. Unless MS changed the relationship in XP indexing being off shouldn’t cause the error, I wouldn’t think.

I may have seen something about Windows Search in the past but dismissed it as another case of using a Mack truck to haul sand for a kid’s sandbox, gross overkill for just a plain simple search for files and folders.

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I’m not familiar with Windows Search. I just in the last month finally upgraded to XP from Win 2k on my desktop. I’ve had XP on my laptop for about 6+ years but only occasionally use it. Is Windows Search a part of a regular XP Home install? I have SP3 installed. Windows Search is different from the regular scratching dog search, right?

Windows Search is different than the search released with XP. It is much better. Many people still prefer a third party desktop search tool rather than Windows Search. Copernic – Software to Search, Find, and Manage Information[/url] and Google Desktop Download[/url] are two but there are others.

Joe

--Joe

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I use Super Finder, which is very fast, but it searches one drive at a time. You’ll make up for it in the time saved. Copernic is limited, and terribly slow, and I don’t recommend letting Google into your computer.

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