Bohack

Microsoft Search should not be feared, it is now an optional install from Microsoft Update Services. It is integrates into Office 2007 for email search capability. However one problem is it changes the default search of Windows Explorer to Desktop Search. So it has pissed off a lot of people and made them uninstall it. There is hope and a way to switch it back.

Yep, it’s replaced the standard Windows search companion (and the friendly dog – Rover from MS Bob). That’s all well and good, except it’s an indexed search so doesn’t necessarily reflect what’s really on disk. And since by default my program files folder isn’t indexed, it never shows any results no matter what I search for – until I go in and change the settings then wait for it to get around to indexing the folders.

There’s a link at the bottom of the tab to use the trusty old search companion, but it means clicking it every time. Oh, and before you ask, no, there isn’t an option to disable this irritating integration in WDS! I hate it when software comes along and arrogantly replaces existing functionality with itself and gives no way to remove it.

You can in fact turn it off… Simply open RegEdit (hit Start > Run then type ‘regedit‘).
Go to the following node:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows Desktop Search\DS

Then double-click on ‘ShowStartSearchBand‘ and set the value to ‘0‘. Close that and you’re done. The next time you click ‘Search’ in explorer the old and reliable search companion will appear. This applies to operating systems before Windows Vista, since Vista has far better search that actually works!

Tags: Windows

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009 at 9:59 am and is filed under Windows.
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