Microsoft promises a fix for Windows 10 zip file woes. In November

Microsoft has confirmed that, yes, that whole zip-file thing is indeed a bug and, er, no. It won’t be fixing it until November. But hey, how about a new Windows Search? Open zip file, cut, paste and… argh! A post by Microsoft on the software giant’s answers forum detailed the issue, which sees the OS silently skip files …

[Chronos]

Windows Search

Isn't that the bit of 7 that slowed everything to a crawl until you disabled indexing? It's that long ago I can't unforget since there's a script that runs on my PXE server after a doze infection that disables all the problematic services and I haven't had to do it manually for yonks.

[Test Man]

Re: Windows Search

Nah, this is simply a change to the current indexer that exposes it to the entire set of folders (and is an opt-in option - not a default). As usual, after indexing searching any folders should be the usual quick self because the details are pulled from the indexed database.

The current search (i.e. what's been in Windows since Vista) only indexes a few user folders, but a user can elect to search outside this, which means the searcher physically inspecting those folders which takes far longer.

The old built-in search before Vista didn't have indexers so searching would actually mean the searcher going through whatever folder was specified to grab details, a process that takes a lot longer than just pulling the already-collated details from a database.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Windows Search

"The old built-in search before Vista didn't have indexers so searching would actually mean the searcher going through whatever folder was specified to grab details, a process that takes a lot longer..."

Uh, not really, especially when you gave it a root directory to search. Now searching for filenames should improve by about ~1sec (oh joy), but that's it. Searching file contents will always depend on the regex and FS speeds.

The current windows search sucks. Ui sucks, syntax sucks, explorer sucks. Everything sucks. Give us back the little dog on the left with actual, logical, commonly used options. Windows sucks shamelessly.

Windows is always dressed for Halloween.

[Dan 55]

Re: Windows Search

Give us back the little dog on the left with actual, logical, commonly used options. Windows sucks shamelessly.

That's the first thing I disabled on XP to get the 2000-style search. I do hope one day people won't think Windows 10 as it is now is good...

[bpfh]

Re: Windows Search

On my personal setup, exclude C:\ from the search tree, then deactivate all services (the exclusion is hoping that it remembers the settings when some update happily reactivates the sodding thing again.

Once that is sorted, install Agent Ransack. Only runs when I want and has a logical search interface, looks in every file in a directory and subfolders if I request, no more telling windows to search for *.* containing whereDidMyFunctionGo à la windows 95, only to find windows search won’t find it because .php is not linked to a recognised windows app extension without hitting the registry...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Windows Search

"The old built-in search before Vista didn't have indexers so searching would actually mean the searcher going through whatever folder was specified to grab details, [...]"

At least on XP it found the files you wanted. The search on W7 often can't find things you know are in that directory - especially when you specify "content:".

It used to be easy to check a directory's source files for occurrence of a particular variable or string. Now you have to go through them each in turn manually.

[JohnFen]

Re: Windows Search

"The search on W7 often can't find things you know are in that directory - especially when you specify "content:"."

Absolutely. And in Windows 10, things are even worse.

[Danny 14]

Re: Windows Search

yup and the REALLY annoying thing is that file indexing service works brilliantly in 2008R2. in the server version it is fast once the index is built.

[Pascal Monett]

Re: "file indexing service works brilliantly in 2008R2"

I have solved the problem with Everything Search. Disabled Windows search, install Everything, let it do it's first indexing run and from that point on, searching is instant and real time.

Like searching should be on computers that are a million times more powerful than the ones we started with last millennium.

If a small group of open source developers can do that for (almost) free, Microsoft should bloody well be able to do it, but noooo, it had to take care of touchscreens and playskool UIs.

[Michael Kean]

Re: "file indexing service works brilliantly in 2008R2"

Search Everything is indeed great, but it only searches filenames and not their contents; so there are times when Windows Search is useful still.

I'm an IT guy who fixes random computers so I still end up bringing up an administrative command prompt and using DOS since at least I know dir /s /a file*.* will actually look everywhere.

[TReko]

Re: "file indexing service works brilliantly in 2008R2"

Everything is superb, but it only searches file names. It indexes the MFT (Master File Table) in NTFS. It does not index file contents.

[Ucalegon]

Re: Windows Search

The students in my secondary school are shown how to search on Windows 10 like this:

"Windows key, start typing the application you wish to launch..."

"Nothing coming up on the screen? Ok, click on the desktop"

"Windows key, start typing the application name you wish to launch..."

"Didn't find the application known to be installed?"

"Okay, click on the applications icon, then on settings, then back on applications again"

"There ya go. Easy."

In fairness, it has meant not needing to prepare a starter activity for any of my lessons this year. Thank you Microsoft.

[bombastic bob]

Re: Windows Search

to HELL with the micro-shaft 'search the universe' indexer anyway. DISABLE THE DAMN THING!

I find that searches are FASTER using grep on POSIX machines. There are no inefficient Micro-shaft "lack of cache" issues on Linux or FreeBSD!

I mean how often do I need to search EVERY EXECUTABLE BINARY for the text "Hi Mom!" - or an SQL database, for that matter.

a) run cygwin

b) use find 'whatever' | grep "whatever" instead.

much better. eliminate searching files that you know are NOT the ones you want. Faster, better, doesn't give Micro-shaft an excuse to slurp your file system for whatever they want to look for and report it back to Redmond...

Besides, Cortana ALWAYS 'hits the web' with whatever you're looking for. the cygwin method does *NOT*

[Fred Dibnah]

Re: Windows Search

It’s telling that the shortcut Win-f opens Search now, when originally it opened Find. That’s progress for you.

[onefang]

Re: Windows Search

"It’s telling that the shortcut Win-f opens Search now, when originally it opened Find."

That's two more letters, so that now Microsoft can keep it's reputation for bloat.

[Anonymous Coward]

Upgrade

> or, heck, just uninstall the OS and have done with.

Back in the day people said "the software required Windows 95 or better, so I installed Linux".

[Ucalegon]

Re: Upgrade

"the software required Windows 95 or better, so I installed Linux"

Still unsure how Windows 10 > Windows 95 (coat etc)

[bombastic bob]

Re: Upgrade

'95 ran more efficiently than Win-10-nic, and didn't slurp nor advertise to you.

And it was RESPECTABLE in its appearance, a nice 3D skeuomorphic appearance without being excessive about 3D-ness [some people thought XP was 'bulbous', but I'd rather have 'bulbous' than FLATSO]. XP could still have the '95-ish look (mostly) with the 'windows 2000' option for the start menu.

[onefang]

"over 50 per cent of commercial devices were now on Windows 10."

Not sure exactly what they mean by "commercial devices". The photocopier? The coffee machine in the office kitchen? 50 per cent of the staplers? Are computers that dual boot Linux / Windows 10 counted as 50 per cent on Windows 10, or only if booted into Windows 50 per cent of the time? Perhaps 50 per cent of computers in the office that sneakily upgraded themselves to Windows 10 before we could stop them all?

[LeahroyNake]

Windows copier ?

Not seen one of those to be honest ;) most of them run very custom versions BSD or Linux from my experience.

Anyway the stapler just got an update and is attacking the spider plant across the office... I'm heading to the pub before it turns its atte.vcgh c v h v th th in

[Danny 14]

Re: Windows copier ?

i still see loads of shop machines sporting the XP lock screen. Sure its not the XP desktop but still, no hurry for 10. The only reason we went to 10 is that we had hardware that didnt support 7, we cant have a mix of OS so we moved to 1607. It was hell at first but we got things ironed out with 1709 - no provisioned apps, start menu that resembles 7 as much as possible. GPO locking down as much crap as possible, chrome (not edge) with legacy support for IE sites that dont like chrome (we use a silverlight library app).

shouldnt need to jump through those hoops but 10 is a fucking wreck out of the box.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Windows copier ?

A friend of mine used to work in a building which was highly Microsoft'ed... Including the lift.

The tales of woo about that building were a source of much amusement. She wasn't hugely amused though, she was sensible enough not to use the lift, but unfortunately worked quite a few floors up.

[Zakhar]

"Are computers that dual boot Linux / Windows 10 counted as 50 per cent on Windows 10, or only if booted into Windows 50 per cent of the time?"

Since you have paid for it when you bought your PC, thanks to Redmond's racketeering policy, it is counted as Windows even if the first thing you do is wipe it out to install your favourite Linux distro.

There are very few hardware vendors that will respect the EU law in this case and propose a meagre refund, but since this is a "manual process", I bet it is still counted as Windows.

[Fading]

In the good old days....

We didn't need to search as we had saved everything with logical names in logical places..... Or in the good old old old days the only searching we had to do was using the tape counter and ff and rw buttons.....

Do remember shutting down the search indexer in Vista though - damn thing would hammer resources at the most inopportune moments...

[onefang]

Re: In the good old days....

Or in the good old old old old old old days, the only searching was for that punched card that slipped out under the door when you dropped a deck.

[Adrian 4]

Re: In the good old days....

I think the peachiest inopportune moments are now reserved for windows update. Search has to make do with less inopportune moments so they can afford to search more directories.

[Chris Evans]

Re: In the good old days....

I don't understand, surely it only needs to scan the whole disc once to create a database. Then it would update it as files are added, removed or moved. The initial scan could take quite a while but the updating should be hardly noticeable.

I must be missing something!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: In the good old days....

"surely it only needs to scan the whole disc once to create a database." - we have a name for that. We call it a file system.

[Danny 14]

Re: In the good old days....

if only the file system knew a list of all the files it has stored....

[Chris Evans]

Re: In the good old days....

"if only the file system knew a list of all the files it has stored...."

But a database could massively speed up finding a file that I can't remember where it is.

I just did a test on an SSD drive with only 167GB of data on it, it tool over 2 minutes to search for a file.

I hope a database would be two orders of magnitude quicker.

[Chris Evans]

Re: In the good old days....

I've got a down vote which presumably means I've got something wrong, please enlighten me.

[JohnFen]

Re: In the good old days....

"We didn't need to search as we had saved everything with logical names in logical places"

Which is why grep was never written.

[DropBear]

Re: In the good old days....

"We didn't need to search"

That would have been before a single application could routinely install anywhere between ten and a hundred thousand files (yes, really) - except we did need to search to find our shit even back then. And that's from someone* who still ignores that "my documents" exists and still keeps partitioning his drive based on specific categories of things to store, from all the way back when having a smaller sector size actually made a difference...

* I can neither confirm or deny baseless allegations regarding the existence of folders like "E:\Temp\tmp3\stuff\legacy\olddrive\unpack\test" on said disk and anyway you can't prove it!

[phuzz]

Re: In the good old days....

I still keep my files in a somewhat logical layout so I can usually easily find the things I want.

Otherwise there's always good old dir -s

[WibbleMe]

Im not quite sure how things wire up but it it was gzip that was barked it may have actually broken the internet

[JohnFen]

If we're talking about search

"You really want a shiny new Windows Search"

In the realm of search, I'd just be happy if the one in Windows 10 actually worked right. As it is, it's so bad that I can't use it at all and use third party search applications instead. Much like what I'm doing with zip files now.

[Glen 1]

Re: If we're talking about search

My main issue with it is inconsistency. Type something, delete it, type it again. You often get a different set of results. How the hell is that considered shippable?

[Tom 38]

Re: If we're talking about search

Type something, delete it, type it again. You often get a different set of results. How the hell is that considered shippable?

Ah, the joys of MLT systems (More Like This). You didn't like the search results it gave you last time obvs, so here are some different ones!

[Glen 1]

Re: If we're talking about search

>didn't like the last ones

Ah, but I *did* like the first ones.

'show network interfaces'

Type the same thing next time I need them.... Bing search.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: If we're talking about search

I believe these are called "alternative facts".

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: If we're talking about search

Another bullet dodged.

[Updraft102]

"The most notable feature in the new version is an improved Windows Search which, in shades of search engines of old, spends a while indexing every folder and file on the PC in what Microsoft claims is a “one-off” process."

Can the user specify to not have their search terms sent to Bing as well?

When I used Windows, I used Everything for search. It's a high bar to reach, and even if MS reaches it, they'd just be reinventing the wheel.

[I can't believe its not butter]

Everything Search

+1 for Voidtools Everything. That should be standard out of the box.

[Steve Davies 3]

Re: Everything Search

It will only be standard if a few things happen

1) MS Buy the thing

2) And they don't crap all over it and make a mere shadow of what it did before.

And the chances of that happening is less than me winning the EuroMillions lottery tonight and as I don't play it, the anwser is obvious.

[Anonymous South African Coward]

Installed Everything on our document server - and it helped a lot, especially when somebody was looking for a certain document, but was not sure where to find it. Big thumbsup for that software.

[a_yank_lurker]

Clueless in Redmond

If there is a serious bug, fix it toot suit even it means a feature upgrade gets pushed back. Users have lived without the new feature so an extra couple of weeks or months wont be a big issue. A serious bug is a major issue.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Clueless in Redmond

> fix it toot suit

I think you'll find it's called a "zoot suit".

[RobThBay]

Re: Clueless in Redmond

Nah... it's "toute suite". Get something done right away.

https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/tout+suite

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Clueless in Redmond

https://youtu.be/PX_HljAELcA?t=27

[Anonymous South African Coward]

ZipGenius or 7-zip works better.

Microsoft is on a slippery downhill.

[cNova]

It's slippery, yet they've managed to gain traction and run downhill at a rate that puts gravity to shame.

[Shadow Systems]

It's not just a downhill slide, it's an Olympic toboggan track, they've strapped Titan boosters to the sides, they've greased the skids, & are hoping for a tail wind.

[Howard Hanek]

Windows Exploder

Add forensic data recovery to the list of skills necessary to run the Windows platform.

'Where HAS your data gone today?'

[MercenaryGman]

Updated search....really?

In the age of solid-state disk (and NVMe is now a 'thing'), having an indexer regularly indexing everything is not something I need or want. If I need to search everything, it's a much smaller price to pay than when storage was round, brown, and spinning.

[Anonymous South African Coward]

Windows 10 - the ultimate downgrade for every PC that you've been waiting for!

Will slow your PC down!

Will delete your precious files!

Will slurp your data and send it to the mothership!

Comes with a b0rked indexing tool that is really fun to use!

Comes with candy crush preinstalled!

Get your copy now! Rush! Hurry!! Quick!!!

[Montreal Sean]

I wonder...

Is Windows 10 better or worse than Vista? ME?

Which one takes the grand suckage prize?

[stavroj]

Re: I wonder...

Windows ME had a fully working zip handling facility.

[a_yank_lurker]

Re: I wonder...

Never used Vista or 10 but did use ME. Personally I never had a problem with ME but XP was definitely much better. ME and Vista were poorly executed but fixable though ME was the last of the line. Vista basically became 7 and itself after a couple of SPs was actually very good. 10 is an unmitigated disaster by design; no QA, no focus user needs, spying, constant resetting user preferences, etc.ME and Vista were much better by comparison even if they both sucked overall.

[onefang]

Re: I wonder...

"Is Windows 10 better or worse than Vista? ME?"

VIsta* and ME suck less coz most of the people still using them actually like it, or they would have moved on. 10 is the most suckage, coz people are stuck with it, being the last Windows version ever.

* Sure in the office I work in there is still a Vista, that no one uses, and every one hates, but someone else was gonna replace it with 7, he just hasn't gotten around to it yet.

[Shadow Systems]

Re: I wonder...

There's an old joke that MS combined various versions of Windows - CE, ME, & NT- to form their new version of Windows Cement.

Even that joking OS would suck less than Win10, especially since Win10 keeps redefining the amount of suck a single product can show, how (bad/good) it can suck, & how shitty it treats the users.

Win10 sucks so hard it makes black holes look like they're ejaculating.

[RyokuMas]

Re: I wonder...

"Win10 sucks so hard it makes black holes look like they're ejaculating."

See icon.

[bombastic bob]

Re: I wonder...

"Win10 sucks so hard it makes black holes look like they're ejaculating."

it's worth having to clean up my keyboard after seeing that...

It begs for a top 10 list, too.

[Unicornpiss]

Re: I wonder...

"Win10 sucks so hard it makes black holes look like they're ejaculating.

You deserve an upvote for that quip, for sure :)

[Anonymous South African Coward]

Re: I wonder...

Interestingly. We had a couple of Gigabyte W565M laptops with Vista preinstalled.

Was absolutely rock solid. Never had any blue screen or funny things to happen.

Upgraded the one to Windows7 & it still is chugging happily along.

Sure, performance in comparison to other (newer) laptops is not stellar, but what the hey, it still works and does so without any fuss or bother.

[Steve Davies 3]

Exactly

Certain phrases keep popping into my mind.

"Could not organise a piss up in a brewery"

"Another fine mess you got us into!"

"I can't beleive it!"

Perhaps by the time the next major update they will have fixed the problems but then it will probably be the same old shit over again...

MS Continious Updates === Continious agony for us users.

[Cynic_999]

Great new search feature!

I expect that not only does it index your entire HDD (taking a mere 10 hours during which your PC is too slow to be used), but it saves the index to "the cloud" so it is never lost. Also allowing anyone else + dog to search your HDD without your knowledge, even if your PC is not switched on. Handy for when the wife wants to buy you some porn that you've not seen. You can easily turn off that feature by going through 15 menu items that don't appear to be in any way related, instructions for which are clearly documented in 6-point type halfway down a 10000 line document on an obscure page of the Microsoft web site. Hidden beneath a pop-up EULA. But it switches itself on again after every update (and if you sneeze a bit hard).

[Steve Davies 3]

Re: Great new search feature!

I expect that not only does it index your entire HDD (taking a mere 10 hours during which your PC is too slow to be used), but it saves the index to "the cloud" so it is never lost.

Why?

This is so that the NSA and GCHQ can know about all those dodgy files you have on your PC.

Honestly, uploading to the cloud is a dumbass move of the highest magnitude.

I wonder how many people realise that this is happening to their data?

My guess is very, very few.

[Baldrickk]

Re: Great new search feature!

I know my dad keeps getting his documents redirected to the one-drive documents directory and not his user documents directory.

He then can't find them when he needs them, and potentially sensitive documents have been copied onto the internet...

fantastic.

I've now nixed One-Drive on his PC as he didn't want or need it, but Windows keeps redirecting his saves there when it recreates the directory... sigh.

[Erik4872]

Release fixes, not features

There's nothing wrong with releasing quickly when your target is an application with one or two entry points and very defined behavior. Operating systems need to be tested a little more carefully, because while your average phone user will just reload the app and web user will just hit F5 to bring your app magically back to some safe state...you can't really do that on an OS.

I highly doubt anyone is listening to average users about patch quality, but if they were they'd hear that these users aren't interested in new color schemes, 3D paint or HoloLens support. I feel Microsoft should slow down on feature development and target their inability to release fixes that work across all situations.

[storner]

'Users will be relieved to know that the team is indeed actually looking at feedback, even if it seems to be skipping the “stop the thing deleting my stuff” entries in favour of “make search a bit faster.”'

You don't seem to understand that these two work together. With all user files deleted, there is a lot less to index. Hence search runs faster.

[Nate Amsden]

how is MS warning users?

Through some document buried on their website that you only see if you're specifically looking for a solution to that issue? Or are they proactive and giving users a message every time they open a zip file? Somehow I think it's the former, in which case, what 99.985% of people will never see it until it's perhaps too late or something?

Not that this affects me, mostly Linux and my Windows stuff is 7 only. I find it quite depressing how all of these complaints about windows 10 quality are falling on deaf ears. Not unique to Windows either of course. At least with Linux it was possible for(example) a group of folks to fork Gnome 2 to make MATE(which I use), and have been maintaining it ever since.

For me anyway very little(if anything) has come out of Windows or even Linux in the past decade that has gotten me excited.

[a_yank_lurker]

Re: how is MS warning users?

@Nate Amsden - "For me anyway very little(if anything) has come out of Windows or even Linux in the past decade that has gotten me excited." - All current OSes for the masses are basically mature products with very few really new 'features' worth getting excited about. Other than ChromeOS being able to run both Andriod apps and Linux applications, I can not think of a feature of any OS I am even paying attention to. Even the ChromeOS feature is more of curiosity than one to make a Chromebook a must buy. All mature products have the problem that the elderly examples are often still quite functional whether it is car, washing machine, or computer. They may lack the 'bells & whistles' of the latest and greatest.

Slurp is trying take a mature product and sex it up so they can point to how hip they are. All they will do is create a failure as they add more and more obscure and pointless 'features' that add complexity for no benefit to the average user; one more bloody thing to break.

[Dave 15]

Re: how is MS warning users?

But I expect this years car to be better than last years.

Mind I am disappointed in this as well

My wifes car is a lot newer, I cant change the headlamp bulb without disassembling half of the under bonnet (one side you have to remove the entire air filter, the other side the entire battery and battery compartment... these are of course preferable to the manufacturers instruction that involves removing the front wheels to remove the front bumper to remove the entire headlamp unit, which in turn relies on getting the headlamps realigned afterwards as the bottom bolt locates in a slot). Now compare that to my car from 1987 which when you opened the bonnet had a little under bonnet light so you you could see the plastic shell on the back of the headlamp that you twisted off with your hand that allowed direct access to the bulb). Or even the headlamps on my old Morris Minor that did require one screw on the chrome bezel to be removed but other than that no further effort - not even opening the bonnet.

Not that the old days were perfect for cars, they did have some issues, but the more the designers 'progress' the worse the products are getting. Maybe its the designers, maybe the accountants or maybe the quality folk who should just say the product is shit, or maybe its all of them because none are trained properly by an apprenticeship scheme

[My-Handle]

Re: how is MS warning users?

Seconded.

I drive a 1997 Toyota Starlet. Most of her parts are a simple unbolt-and-replace deal. She had a new clutch put in her recently, took a little less than 6 hours to do.

My other half drives a newer Nissan X Trail. Great machine, but with all the extra bells and whistles crammed underneath the bonnet the same clutch-replacement job took three and a half week-end days and five evenings during the intervening week. Just stripping the engine down to get at the sodding thing took days! Even replacing a rear seat-belt (prime chewing target for the dogs) involves stripping out every bit of internal trim starting from the boot and working forwards.

[doublelayer]

Little victories

I don't use windows a lot, but I have an application that requires it to run, which I'm running on an old laptop running windows 10 (it only has to run this one application and a tiny script that sends the data somewhere else, so it needs little processing). I was working next to it yesterday and had inadvertently awoken it. About two minutes later, a message came on the screen. It read "We can't install some updates. Click here for more information". That message made me happy for several minutes.

[cNova]

My favorite thing about Windows 7 Search...

...Is that even if you turn the option off, specify that it search no locations, and delete that index dbs, the service will still randomly start and churn away on your drive FNAR, it just won't store what it finds (as you've deleted the dbs).

To truly kill it, you have to disable the service, which will either vanish the search box on the Start Menu plus the upper right of Explorer hence making built-in searching impossible; OR it will have no obvious effect other than making search faster and more accurate than with the indexer running.

[david 12]

Dir a.b /s

The only way to get search to work is to open a cmd prompt and type DIR.

Perhaps they should drop the name "Windows" and call the OS something descriptive like "DOS"

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 10

The Fattest Suicide Note in HIstory.

[A.P. Veening]

Search?

I don't want anything searched, I want it found. Can't somebody write a "Find" tool? And while at it, please find some intelligence (and not of the military kind) in Redmond.

[Shadow Systems]

Re: Search?

Intelligence in Redmond? Not even SETI could find intelligent life out there. MS is a dimensional rift to the Plane of Stupidity.

[A.P. Veening]

Re: Intelligence in Redmond

I've given up hope on intelligent life in Redmond, I was hoping for a break through in Artificial Intelligence, most likely imported to Redmond.

[Unicornpiss]

Now you're just trying..

" MS is a dimensional rift to the Plane of Stupidity."

Now you're just trying to top your black hole ejaculation comment. (love to see that taken out of context)

[bombastic bob]

Re: Search?

there used to be 'FIND.EXE' but using it was worse than cumbersome.

a) install cygwin

b) use 'find' and 'grep' together. works for me, is usually very fast, does not need to index the entire universe just to actually "find something" and DOES NOT announce EVERY LOCAL SEARCH to bing's slurpage with your Micro-shaft "cloudy" logon attached.

[dnicholas]

Does this fancy new search comb through deleted files too? That'd be useful, essential even

[Mike 137]

"You don't want fixes. You really want a shiny new Windows Search."

Actually, we don't want either of these. We want an OS that just works silently in the background without interfering with the jobs we're trying to get done.

Just like we want applications that are easy and intuitive to use and don't keep intruding themselves on our work.

The entire IT industry has forgotten that it only exists to serve the user - not to educate, indoctrinate, convert, 'drive change', or even to 'secure'. That one's the biggest joke - any vendor that has to provide fixes for exploitable bugs every month for the entire life on an OS or application taking it upon itself to implement 'security' on our behalf without our involvement or consent.

Only de facto monopolies can get away with this.

[A.P. Veening]

Only de facto monopolies can get away with this.

Not even a monopoly can get away with this for very long without loosing that first and most important "mo" ;)

[Jamesit]

To make search faster, why can't the search just read the filenames from the MFT? As far as I know all files are listed there and should be able to be read quickly.

[Baldrickk]

How do you think the indexing works?

The indexing process takes those file names and puts them into a structure that can be searched faster than linearly - like a binary tree for example. That way it can take O(log(n)) time to search instead of O(n).

In fact it can index contents and search that too faster than a linear search of the MFT for a decently sized file system.

[Unicornpiss]

Indexing

"The indexing process takes those file names and puts them into a structure that can be searched faster than linearly "

The problem is the search and/or harvesting algorithm doesn't seem to be the best. So either filling a database full of crap and running a search on it, or filling a db with good data and then using a crap search (or both) still isn't nearly as good and fast as a proper search, such as with Agent Ransack, which I'm quite pleased with on Windows.

[Dave 15]

some options

They could consider putting a UI on grep and the ability to just do a dir *.txt /s via a pretty UI... the current windows search is frankly crap and I do not know how it was ever possible to make either of the above commands as slow as windows has managed.... for heavens sake if you have done some indexing thats usually supposed to improve speed, windows indexing appears to make for a very very very very slow search after it has spent literally months tossing around indexing.

Really MS go and learn how to code, get rid of the shit, stop arsing around with c# and do it properly. Go back and look at OSs like CPM (where dos came from), dos, drdos (like dos but ran where it was not from a copy), nucleus or dare I say it linux (not a linux fan if I am honest)... then learn that windows is a crock of shit and you need to write a proper os

[Czrly]

I only want one feature from Windows Search...

Allow me to disable results from the 'web. That is all I want. Seriously.

For actual, real file-search, I use Agent Ransack which, amazingly, happens to be faster than any version of Windows Search, ever, and doesn't require an always-on indexing service. I only ever use Windows Search for start-menu search (autocomplete, basically) and the fact that the slightest typo sends you to Bing, requiring the tedious launching of Edge which I never otherwise use, is the most annoying thing.

Of course, it seems like there's a 20% chance that you'll end up on Bing even without a typo which is also extremely aggravating.

(Now some "Klugscheißer" is going to reply, telling me that you *can* actually disable web search, rendering this comment false. Please do! Call this a comment-gambit for useful knowledge. Any minute now...)

[Baldrickk]

Re: I only want one feature from Windows Search...

Agreed so much. I've turned off the web search, and it still suggests searching on bing, sometimes without returning the result I'm looking for on my local machine when I've even spelled it correctly.

For example, one time when trying to start notepad++:

Type "notepad" into start menu.

ONLY web "results"* returned

This is silly.

(*actually, search suggestions that would launch bing search for the term, I have to admit that it doesn't actually perform the search with it turned off)

[Unicornpiss]

Re: I only want one feature from Windows Search...

I think Windows search on Win10 is crap, but weirdly I've found that if you type part of something into the search box, wait for it to populate with its worthless garbage, then delete a few characters and put them back again -slowly-, it will actually sometimes find what you're looking for, such as "User Account Control" settings.

Still for file searching, freeware Agent Ransack blows away anything from any version of Windows.

[Tabor]

Interesting

When reading the Microsoft post of the zip file issue I found this of note :

"Microsoft is working on a resolution and estimates a solution will be available in early November for this issue."

The year in that statement is suspiciously absent.

[BRYN]

Does ths mean....

that people are going to get massive .EBD files on there PC's? No such an issue on a machine with a 1TB drive. Might be an issue on say an tablet with a 128gb SSD. I certainly don't want my drive space being eaten by an ever increasing search catalogue database....

[steviebuk]

Unfortunately....

....as SatNav has made the company big profits, nothing will change any time soon because all the share holders care about is profit.

All I want back, is the pissing ability to decide when I do the updates, not for them to be rammed down my throat by SatNav.

[manxappa]

13 years later. . .

Win 10 shiny "new" search?

spotlight OSX 2005

lol

[Dacarlo]

Everything..

Voidtools "Everything" is vastly superior for searching in almost every way.

[Unicornpiss]

7-Zip

Windows' handling of .zip files (and any other compressed and/or archive format, most not supported) has traditionally been slow and cumbersome. Now it appears to be escalated to potentially destructive, or at least confusing to work with. (and around)

I fail to understand why after literally decades MS has repeatedly failed to get this right when there are excellent freeware, even open-source apps that do a spectacular job and go light years beyond the functionality built into Windows.

[Anonymous Coward]

On a clear disk you can seek forever

Fastest way to search a disk is if it has nothing on it. That's how MS is speeding up search.

Wot, you thought the "improvements to search" and the 'random, accidental' loss of files were separate????

Also.. 19H1 - wasn't that the ID of some sort of nasty virus? No? Oh. It soon will be then.

[RedCardinal]

>>The problem only affects extraction using Windows’ own File Explorer.

And who in their right mind would ever use that....?