Forum Discussion
Windows 11 - File Explorer - Search Contents fails
I've brought the computer to two specialist shops (where multiple people worked on it) and had one man work remotely. No one could solve this. They also tried running it from an external hard drive off Win10 and the same problem occurred. That was a surprise because I felt sure it was all about 11. That made me think going back wouldn't help.
In the end, at least for now, I'm giving up and going to use an open source product called DocFetcher. It was free. I downloaded it onto 11, let it do its indexing on a large sample of data and it found everything successfully, at least in the testing that I did.
Very frustrating and disappointing, but I'd lose weeks of customizing to go back to 10 with no guarantee that the problem will go away. Just hoping that Microsoft is aware and works on it and suddenly, sometime, in some update, it starts working.
One person had a theory that it might work better on computers that upgrade to 11 than ones that start on 11...that some little file might be in 10 and stay there but be missing in new installations of straight 11. No idea if that has merit.
Going back to 10 doesn't appeal to me for another reason: Who wants a new computer with an operating system that Microsoft has promised to end support for in only 2.5 years? And although upgrading could work later, I wouldn't know when that would be and we've all heard upgrade nightmare stories. I should be able to use 11 now if it's supposedly ready-for-prime-time. I curse at the TV every time I see a Win11 commercial. Wish we'd never left 7! It was all I ever wanted, other than it no longer being supported!
"One person had a theory that it might work better on computers that upgrade to 11 than ones that start on 11...that some little file might be in 10 and stay there but be missing in new installations of straight 11. No idea if that has merit."
On this point, I can add data. I have two computers, of different makes, both bought around Jan. 1, one with 11 installed and one with 10, and I upgraded to 11 right away. I'm pretty sure that both searched normally when I first got them, and both at some point stopped searching folders properly. I presume this change happened after updates in the one case, and after installing 11, or after additional updates, in the other case. Someone else can speculate what this means, if anything.
anyone know if this issue is fixed in the current stable (non-beta) version of Windows 11? I would like to get out of beta, but not if this is still broken in the regular release.
Still broken for me.
- I was directed to download a Beta version of Windows 11, which has helped to some extent.
The file handling capabilities of Windows 11 have been extended with all kinds of dinky extras but still when the core function is not reliable this hardly helps. I find that often the search function returns no results on the first try, but after refreshing the page a couple of times it does. Weird .... and very annoying. MS have been very helpful trying to fix the problem, but alas I think they are as confounded as we are.
MB1000No improvement. No real hopes that it will. I'm using a third-party software called DocFinder that seems to do the trick, though not quite as elegantly as File Explorer did on my old pre-11 computer. Sad.
- I'm using Copernic Desktop Search that I used to use a long time ago. It works like charm.
