Windows – Prevent ‘Searches might be slow in non-indexed locations’ banner from appearing

searchsearch-indexingssdwindowswindows 7

With a fast SSD I find that Windows Search indexing is superfluous and even slows certain operations down so I have disabled it.

However, when performing a search with a wide enough scope, Windows displays this banner at the top of the Explorer window:

You can click the X to close it, but it will reappear the next time you do a search.

The only methods I've seen for disabling it are to reinstate Windows Search which I obviously don't want to do.

Is there a registry key or other setting that I can change to modify this behaviour?

Best Answer

Thanks for the replies. In the end the solution was embarrassingly simple: just right-click on the banner and select 'Never show this again'.

Job done.

Why I didn't think to try that before I don't know.

Related Solutions

Windows – a faster way to search the Windows registry

Faster, and dumps all results so you can go through the whole list without hitting next a hundred times. Also free since it is a powershell script:

https://github.com/KurtDeGreeff/PlayPowershell/blob/master/Search-Registry.ps1

Search-Registry.ps1 improves on regedit's Find feature in four ways:

The script searches by using regular expressions.
It can search the registry on remote computers.
It can limit the number of returned search results.
It outputs objects than can be filtered, sorted, exported to comma-separated value (CSV) files, and so on.

# Download script
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/KurtDeGreeff/PlayPowershell/master/Search-Registry.ps1 -OutFile Search-Registry.ps1

# View docs
Get-Help .\Search-Registry.ps1

# Simple example (search HKEY_CURRENT_USER for values with data containing "powershell")
.\Search-Registry -StartKey HKCU -Pattern "PowerShell" -MatchData

Windows Search – Indexing Options Selecting Wrong Drive After Cloning

First of all I can reproduce your problem:

The problem is caused by the system file \System Volume Information\IndexerVolumeGuid in each of the cloned volumes. Apparently you are right about the fact that the system is confused by the GUID(s) you see in those the registry entries under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Search\CrawlScopeManager\Windows\SystemIndex\*, and this file should be the provider of the GUID(s).

Since the volumes are cloned, this particular file is identical among each of them just like other files. And it will NOT get "updated" (i.e. regenerated to avoid conflicts) when the volumes are mounted, just like the volume serial:

However, apparently this file is safe to be deleted, and once the volume is mounted again, a new one will be generated; the problem will be gone once ALL the volumes that owned a duplicated GUID are remounted with unique GUIDs (so a reboot may be necessary if it involves the current system volume):

Unfortunately, I am not sure if there's a convenient/safe way to delete it under Windows:

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Windows – a faster way to search the Windows registry

Windows Search – Indexing Options Selecting Wrong Drive After Cloning

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