Build a good index
If you want to improve your searches, the best place to start is with the
indexing feature itself. In Control Panel, open the Indexing Options window
to show the folders in which Windows currently looks for files. Click
Modify to open the Indexed Locations window shown in Figure 2-18.
78 | Chapter 2: Shell Tweaks
Here, place a checkmark next to each folder to include in the index; you can
index an entire drive, or use the tiny arrows to expand branches and index
only certain subfolders. (If the Show all locations button is available at the
bottom of the window, click it now to have full reign over your hard disk.)
By default, only your personal files are indexed. But if you plan on hacking
up Vista as described elsewhere in this book, you may want to index your
entire drive. This will make it easier to find .exe files in the Windows folder,
for instance, but doing so will increase the size of the index, which may slow
down the rest of your searches.
For privacy purposes, you may wish to exclude certain folders by clearing
their checkboxes. You can further speed up searches by also excluding folders
you don??™t need to search. All the folders you??™ve included or excluded
appear in the Summary of selected locations section.
Click OK when you??™ve selected folders to index, but you??™re not done yet.
Next, click the Advanced button to open the Advanced Options window.
Most of the options shown here are fairly self-explanatory, but what may
not be obvious is that Windows won??™t index many file types unless you
select them by hand in the File Types tab, shown in Figure 2-19.
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