Breaking, literally: Microsoft's fix for CPU-hogging Windows bug wrecks desktop search Microsoft's build 18362.356 (KB4515384) for its Windows 10 May 2019 Update (version 1903) rolled out on Tuesday with security improvements for Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, networking tech and input devices – and a CPU usage fix that, for some, has broken desktop search. The security tweaks address a variety of …
Ohh buddy, desktop search in Windows has never worked.
Check out Everything Search. That is a search that works, and takes less than a millisecond to produce results.
You know, like a search should on computers that are a million times more powerful than when Windows came out.
After the CPU-hog issue and numerous workaround attempts, I ended up just giving up on it. Removed Cortana (which involved a fun, click-speed-testing task kill and folder rename before it self-restarted) and installed Open-Shell. It's a breath of (old-style) fresh air, to be honest.
Removed Cortana (which involved a fun, click-speed-testing task kill and folder rename before it self-restarted) and installed Open-Shell. It's a breath of (old-style) fresh air, to be honest.
That's one of the purposes of having a dual-boot setup with Linux on a MSWin system; management of the MSWin system. Just make sure you've set hibernation off on MSWin.
I've had this wracking, awful chest cough accompanied by blood and mucus. I've been seeing the same doctor for years, but all he's done recently is prescribe leaches and essential mint oil. As a result, I no longer see that doctor.
Ipso facto, my chest problem must have improved.
Too right, the quality of their updates has become so bad that it's hardly news worthy when they go wrong, and everyone just resigns themselves to dealing with the aftermath, or doing everything possible to delay updates and hoping the glitches are fixed by the time your PC forces them to install. IMHO the main selling point of Pro vs Home edition on a home setup is the extra time you can delay updates! I'll pay the extra just to avoid my PC being used as a test lab for their updates.
I didn't even realise there was a worthwhile call/chat option available! Always found the best option was to head to the forums, see if anyone else has the same thing, and if not post. Then wait and hope for an MVP or similar to answer, cos if it's a MSFT response you just know it'll be useless... lots of "I understand", while clearly not reading the information you've provided, and suggesting reinstalling Windows or something equally useless.
<quote>Despite the problematic release, Fortin maintained that the quality of Windows releases has been improving. "Over the last three years one of our key indicators of product quality – customer service call and chat volumes – has steadily dropped even as the number of machines running Windows 10 increased," he said.</quote>
When I read that, I laughed so dammed hard that I both shat and pissed on myself.
Excuse me while I take a shower.
My sympathies. Whilst you are hosing yourself down, I'll enlighten this Fortin chappie.
Customer service calls are only available to those with service contracts. MS hasn't had free telephone support since ... well who knows? (Certainly not this century.) A reduction in call volumes is probably an indication that your customers are giving up on you. (That's either "your support option" or "your products generally".)
Despite the problematic release, Fortin maintained that the quality of Windows releases has been improving. "Over the last three years one of our key indicators of product quality – customer service call and chat volumes – has steadily dropped even as the number of machines running Windows 10 increased," he said.
Coming soon : Cortana - the Fortin project. Not to be confused with Colossus - the Forbin project. Although they will have the same outcome.
Have you never noticed how easy it is to make pain and irritation go away by simply ceasing the activity which is causing them. Tis is exactly what I found about eight years ago when I -GAVE UP_on MS WINDOWS and migrated to a totally Linux environment. YES, I did have some early MINOR Issues, easily redolved by seeking help from the highly supportive LINUX COMMUNITY. I am now a very happy bunny, doing CAD work, and corresponding frrely with colleagues. (Libre office)
NEVER AGAIN WILL I EVER PAY THE MICROSOFT TAX FOR THE " PRIVILEDGE OF RUNNING (OR TRYING TO RUN...)"SECOND RATE SOFTWARE
For years I've battled with that damned searchindexer.exe. Some genius in Microsoft thought it would be a brilliant idea to run something in the background that slaughtered CPU / disk IO without providing some simple and visible way of seeing if it was running and being able to pause, stop or configure it, e.g. a taskbar icon. Instead you have to go trawling through control panel and services to stop that thing.
The one laptop here with windows pretty much runs disk at 100%. Yip it's search.
Reminds me of Office 97 and the "minor" Indexing issue it had with the CPU and wasn't that fun.
It must be time for some real clever Start-up to write a totally new and revolutionary operating system so Microsoft can buy them out innovate and publish something that will actually work as advertised.
"publish something that will actually work as advertised."
...until they decide to "improve" it and/or integrate into some other part of Windows and not only mange to remove all the most popular and useful features, but break it beyond repair.
"and moving files really fucks it up."
I wonder if that's why since Windows 8 MS have been trying to hide explorer from the users and dumping files into Pictures, Music etc folders by default. They don't want you moving stuff into your own filing system.
This is causing so many issues because we're having computers were Cortana is currently consuming 80% of CPU cycles for no reason as the search box just isn't working.
On my desktop if I log in as a user the search is broke, but if I log in as Admin everything is fine, but I don't really want to be working with Admin credentials...
Seriously, Window Search has NEVER been reliable. The latest one won't find things like 'Word' after installing MS Office, unless you wait a bit. What kind of fuckery is that?!
Windows is full of so many stupid little bugs. Even right now, I'm working on a laptop, and it's running just on the mains with no battery until I put the case back together. The battery indicator has a cross on it. That's fine, it means there's no battery. But the % indicator says 255% available. Seriously? It's minor and unlikely to be seen too frequently but it's a schoolboy error!
I haven't written a line of code for nigh-on 30 years, so I don't know the ins and outs of this, but it's clear to me that the quality of the code coming out of that company is just not as high as it could be.
Yes, really. Your experience may differ, but I've certainly seen the start menu fail in the manner described.
I can also confirm the tip mentioned earlier about using DIR instead of Windows search. It is at least an order of magnitude faster on my machines. On the other hand, that is probably because I have removed the "make this searchable" attribute from C:\-and-all-subs. Back on the first hand, that's because if I don't do that then the indexing service makes a brute force estimate of drive C:'s MTBF.
I imagine everyone at Microsoft has an SSD now, so the utterly dire performance of (default-configured) Windows on spinning rust simply doesn't show up in testing anymore.
Gave up with Windows Search and Windows Explorer about ten years ago.
Been using Directory Opus ever since.
Trouble is with Dopus, it’s a real culture-shock when I have to use a WinPC that does not have Dopus installed.
The good news is that every year I have to use Windows for less and less programs. I just hope I get to use Linux for everything before I die. Time is running out for me, but I continue to live in hope..!! :D
Somehow the update 'broke' chrome on my desktop. I click on the chrome icon, it loads, spawns other chrome tasks, and...no chrome window drawn. I've wasted an hour and a half this morning uninstalling, re-booting in between, waiting for the cleanup forced update to finish, etc.
I've battled ms's forced update for years. I sincerely, truly hate the idiot that thought this was a good idea. The previous forced update (July 2019) happened on a work pc 120 miles away. Cost me 36 hours of work Fri AM to Mon PM, 460 miles of driving, 8 hours travel. Wound up just buying a new pc. What bothers me - a lot - is this was a perfectly functioning pc before the update was forced upon it and which I had no say whatever in applying. (The person using this pc called me up and said 'the pc just sits and reboots itself over and over.')
The only "feature" Win 10 (all versions) needs is an 'I'll decide when and if I want to install this patch' option. Period. There is nothing else the OS "needs". No cute almost-like-a-phone icon charms, no 'search from anywhere', no windows app market crap. I don't want my pc to be almost like something else - I just want it to work.
Anecdotal, and havent found a pattern yet: a number of laptops that received one or more of the latest updates are now bricked. Apparently during the upgrade a BSOD happened, and somehow killed something important, thus the user no longer able to reboot, safe mode, etc. and undo the latest installs.
I've put updating my laptop on hold for a month, until i hear/read about the all-clear...
"Over the last three years one of our key indicators of product quality – customer service call and chat volumes – has steadily dropped even as the number of machines running Windows 10 increased,"
Perhaps decreasing numbers of requests for support are an indication of the increasing quality of Microsoft's products, but from my personal experience, it is more likely an indicator of the pain, frustration, and lack of helpfulness of Microsoft's support organization. The members of the support team with whom I've spoken are uniformly polite, almost to an irksome degree. But as a native of New Jersey, I would be more than willing to trade politeness for the ability to solve problems.
"Now listen here, ya stupid jag-off. Right click on file while pressing the f'ing shift key to activate the secret menu. Then select 'Repair Files', let it work for 10 minutes, and then don't ever do anything stupid like that again! Capeesh?"
We had a little tiny problem when rolling out win10 in our corporate environment where the 'new' calculator app would stop working, along with the photo app.
After spending rather a good deal of time with Premier support, the best we got out of it was 're-image the machine', 're-build your master image', and 'pray that the process that builds those apps works correctly this time'. We couldn't get a root cause from them either as to why it would just fail out of the blue.
We were not impressed.
Strange. I am not seeing any problems and KB4514384 is installed: Desktop Search is lighting fast, Cortana Search works fine, no weird CPU drains or memory bloats.
Windows Search has been dependable for me (my library's index has over 250,000 items in it), been using it for years, but it doesn't have lots of frills. Still, there are some nice features:
- Being able to drag a search string to a folder and have it create shortcut to that search is a handy feature.
- Dynamically constructing a desktop search hyperlink in Excel is easy and really useful.
I do recommend installing TET's free iFilter for indexing your PDFs.
"Windows Search has been dependable for me"
I'm jealous. Windows search hasn't worked acceptably well for me since Win 8. Oh, it'll find some stuff, but it will leave out a lot, too -- which is worse than if it just didn't work at all.
I've given up on Windows entirely now. I mean, I have to use it at work, but I no longer use any of the utilities (except Notepad and the calculator) that comes with it unless absolutely necessary. It's burned the last of my trust.
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