Attention: We are retiring the ASP.NET Community Blogs. Learn more >

Windows Desktop Search 4.0 Has Arrived

A new version of Windows Desktop Search has just been released - Windows Search 4.0 Preview. (The "preview" part means it's still being tested out, sort of like "beta.") For those of you who don't know, Windows Search is the desktop search feature that is built into Windows Vista, but you don't have to be running Vista to take advantage of Windows Search - you can run it in XP, too.

This latest update is a significant release, with many features designed for enterprise users. However, there are new features that will benefit everyone, like the speed increase (33% faster!), its ability to index encrypted files, and Remote Index Discovery, which means it can index all the Windows machines on your network, no matter what version of Windows they are running.

Other improvements include:

  • Bug fixes - most of the reported bugs seen since Windows Vista RTM have been fixed.
  • Rollback Recovery - your search index will roll back to the last known good state if an error occurs instead of being rebuilt from scratch.
  • Windows software updates for Watson errors
  • Faster previewer updates for Windows XP

For IT Professionals specifically, important new features include:

  • Improved performance when indexing Exchange in online mode - less packets and less RPC calls are made, which means less load on the server. Plus, no local cache (.ost)
  • Support for indexing online delegate mailboxes
  • Support for Group Policy settings (Search.adm/Search.admx) has been extended and improved, including per-user policies.
  • An add-in for indexing redirected "My Documents" files (32-bit)

Here's where you can get it:

VIA Channel 10

6 Comments

  • I have a 64-bit XP machine and a 32-bit XP machine - both with Search 4.0. The 32-bit machine has a shared drive with all our CAD data and my 64-bit machine has this drive mapped as a network drive, but I'm unable to search the CAD-drive from the 64-bit machine - is this a bug that's going to be fixed?

    Another 32-bit machine on the network works fine.

  • please download/install the following plug-in from Microsoft to enable indexing on shared drive

    http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=f7e981d9-5a3b-4872-a07e-220761e27283&displaylang=en

  • Thanks - I will try it tomorrow when I'm back at work.

    ...the only thing with that link is that it says it's for WDS 3 - and I was under the impression that WDS 4.0 had this, which appears to be true for 32-bit systems.

  • just loaded this on because WDS 3 kept on throwing up errors that had to be reported to windows. Reinstalled SP3 and WDS 3 and still had the same issue. Cleaned the registry and all and still no give so I downloaded this. Much thanks for the intel. So far no errors although its only been less than an hour(the errors usually show up right when windows starts up).

  • Is there any way to fall back to the old XP Search?
    I don't like this Desktopsearch since it's not obeying to my Skin for Windows, looks ugly and is simply superflous.

    You can use the old Search to scoop through LAN-Folders as well.

    Thanks in Advance.

  • Hi Hosam

    Just wondering if anyone has found support for working through this known issue with WDS 4.0.

    I want to know if microsoft has fixed this EPIC FAIL:

    "Q: I cannot add a UNC file path on a 64-bit Microsoft Windows operating system.

    A: No workaround. The UNC protocol handler doesn’t currently support 64-bit versions of Windows."

    I can provide more details if needed.

    Thanks in advance

Comments have been disabled for this content.