Why was file search much faster in Windows XP than in subsequent versions?
Why was file search much faster in Windows XP than in subsequent versions?
On Windows Vista and every subsequent version of Windows, if I search for a file and include the entire C:\ drive, I might very well have time to make tea or a sandwich while the search results come in. On Windows XP, using the search dialog with the animated dog, I can search the entire C:\ drive and expect it to be done in a minute or two, if not in seconds.
It can't just be nostalgia; I can replicate these results on period-accurate hardware today. What changed with Vista to make file searching so much slower, even with indexing enabled?
switch to linux mint and all these issues poof away
IF you turn off searching the internet and fetching ads, file search can still be fast. However Microsoft keeps resetting that so I just gave up - winfdows search is not worth ising
i feel the same way about task manager windows 7's task manager was much faster i swear!
Windows sucks more at every new release. Management issues. Prefer developing new shitty features instead of cleaning the bloat. Anything is possible.
Windows sucks more at every new release.
10 was better than 8 IMO
8 was designed terribly, but the engineering was unbelievably good. It was more streamlined and stable than it had ever been, it was just skinned by a tablet-obsessed moron.
10 was a huge step back in technical quality, but it undid a lot of the stupid mistakes on the front-end.
8 I believe was the last in their "tick tock" strategy...
IE "ticks" were the ones where they threw a bunch of stuff at the wall to see what sticks, basically putting users as paying beta testers.
"Tocks" were when they'd basically look at the piles of complaints from their ticks, try and fix as many as they could, and impliment some of the small features people wanted.
Ticks: Win 95, Win ME + 2000, Vista, Windows 8.
Tocks: Win 3.1, Win 98, Win XP, Windows 7, "sorta windows 10, hard to really say that model was made to be the start of more or less a auto upgrading by default as the new normal)
the ui was dogshit but it was extremely lightweight and fast on my potato with 512mb ram and 60gb ide hdd.
https://www.voidtools.com/support/everything/
Works well.
Not a Windows user but this was my solution when I was
The question is basically answered now, so I'll just drop this video here for some additional context about Microsoft's history of trying to build a file system that solves the problem, and the challenges they faced even in the early XP days:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5d5H92c4Mk
tl;dw: MS tried to understand the context of each file, not just the name. Once you add dozens of pieces of metadata to each of tens of thousands of files (even 20+ years ago), the whole system became too difficult for them to properly index and manage efficiently.
I fucking hate Microsoft search. Microsoft controls the OS, they control the file system, why the fuck do they suck so bad at file search?
I've been using a program named Everything for file search, it's everything the built-in search should be.
I don't think it's a coincidence that MS fixed Windows search when Google had its Google Desktop search product and Windows Search went back to horrible when Google discontinued Desktop Search.
You can find files faster on Windows by using the command line dir command with recursion switch and watch every directory tree scroll by until it finds the file than wait for the GUI even when Indexed.
I’m talking out of my ass, but I’m assuming it’s because of indexing. Operating Systems nowadays use indexing for searching your system, and it can be fast IF the file you’re looking for was indexed. That’s why it routinely re-indexes your entire system. It might take longer if the file wasn’t included. With file systems getting larger exponentially, indexing can be more efficient. Whereas before, the OS literally just goes over all your files to find a match.
Have no idea; last version of Windows that I used was XP then my husband moved me over to Linux and I preferred it ever since
He’s a keeper.
I've noticed this too. I've given up on it and instruct others to look for programs in the start menu alphabetically instead of searching because even that is bad. Same with Outlook searches, I instruct people to use webmail because the searching works there.
Back in the day, you scanned the disk. Folder by folder, file by file. If what you were looking for appeared early in your search, you were golden. It turns out, though, that scanning a filesystem is computationally very complex and takes a long time. Not something you might notice so much on a PC, but something that you would notice on a server. So, instead, you want to index the disk, slowly and over time, and then you search against the index. This works well in a server, but no so much on a workstation. Well there's really no difference between Windows 11 and Windows Server 2024 except for some fine tuning of resource allocation. Essentially, you get the very (for desktops) ineffective server version.
dos had dir/s/*blah.wtf - pipe it into a txt file for the results if there's too many. or /p
but yeah, on windows - everything. everything is the best search I've ever used, it updates (near as I can tell) instantly, and just freakin works great.
Everything they've made recently is so utterly shit that I've started to think they actually want to slow down and frustrated the user. Like that better engagement figures or something. I've never been so regularly pissed off with how fucking shit their products are.
Because it didn’t index file contents back then.
Also, storage wasn’t cheap so people deleted stuff back then.
Also, that shit was slow back then too. Searching a file share was awful. Now it’s a magically federated index. It used to be so slow you could buy a google appliance for indexing your data.
Check your indexed folders settings. Newer windows relies much more on this, but does a great job when what you're after is included.
You definitely should still check this, but even with proper indexing settings Windows is still garbage at search and has been since XP.
And this is coming from one of the only people who ever defends MS on Lemmy.