windows 7windows-search
What's the best way to disable indexing in Windows 7?
All of the articles that I've found online instruct me to access services.msc and disable the Windows Search service. However, even after I did that, when I right click properties of my C-drive, I notice the "Allow files on this drive…indexed…" is still checked.
So should I uncheck that option and re-enable Windows Search? Or just uncheck it and leave the Windows Search service disabled?
I was having the same problem and found a solution. All my code is stored under a single folder:
F:\projects\
Under that folder are trees of code and related project files that total over 2GB. I constantly need to search this tree and windows Indexing has actually been an extremely useful tool for doing fast searches, so turning it off was not an option. I want to exclude the SVN folders because they clutter up my search results, (2) unnecessary drag on my system, (3) SVN, Win7, and MS Security Essentials seem to not work nicely when doing large SVN operations.
Before you try the solution, reproduce the problem:
Solution:
csmcmd.exe /add_rule file:///F:\projects\*\.svn\* /USER /EXCLUDEI figured this out by first running the command: csmcmd.exe /enumerate_rules, to list all the existing ones. There were already some rules with asterix (*) wildcard's being used by Windows, so it was proof this was possible.
Now repeat the steps to reproduce the issue, and you should no longer see the SVN clutter in your search results. Give the computer sometime to update the indexes -- this took less than 5 minutes on my system. Sometimes restarting the Search service, kicking off a rebuild/reindex, or a reboot help move things along.
Update: Some of my SVN projects use ".svn", and some use "_svn", so I've added these two rules to every drive:
csmcmd.exe /add_rule file:///F:\*\.svn\* /DEFAULT /EXCLUDE
csmcmd.exe /add_rule file:///F:\*\_svn\* /DEFAULT /EXCLUDE
Go to the search settings. (Open the Control Panel, click "Indexing Options")
Open "Advanced Options" and choose "Add UNC Location"
Best Answer
If your objective is to retain search functionality, but not to use indexes, you need to set up the following situation:
Turning off indexing
Start -> Run -> services.msc -> disable and stop
Windows Search.Ensure that the Startup type is set to disabled to prevent Windows from starting it again automatically.
Deleting the existing index
You can get the path to the search index from the following dialog box:
Control Panel -> Indexing Options -> Advanced
However since we have disabled indexing, it will be empty:
But we can still look up the value in the registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows SearchDataDirectorykey:Delete the
Searchfolder specified by that path.Avoid re-enabling indexing
Beware that when you run a search, you will frequently see this popup:
If you enable this, the indexing service will be restarted, and Windows will start using the index for indexed locations. So don't do that if you don't want it to use the index.
Search file contents
You may want to turn on searching file contents:
Control Panel -> Folder Options -> Search Tab