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General Software Discussion / Re: Windows Desktop Search 3.01 for XP

« on: April 03, 2007, 02:31 PM »

So I installed WDS 3.01 again and now no reindex mania. Practically same conditions except a minor update to Kaspersky AV. I would think difference is Ive yet to add that many folders. Last time I included almost everything from start, this time I add one at a time. Did exclude some irelevant folders like Temp etc. but most were target. Will assume that was problem.

-dk70 (April 02, 2007, 10:10 PM)

So the only thing that should need to be recrawled on start-up would be network shares, Outlook versions prior to 2007, and the IE history cache.  If you use Outlook 2007 and haven't installed the IE history or UNC/FAT add-ins, then nothing should ever need to be recrawled in WDS 3.0.  That's because WDS 3.0 can read filesystem changes from the USN change journal to make sure it's in sync, and Outlook 2007 knows what has and hasn't been indexed since it "pushes" data into the index instead of having it be crawled like previous version of Outlook.

In those other cases, the indexer doesn't know what's changed since the last time it was running - so it needs to do what we call an "incremental" crawl.  It does not mean that everything gets re-indexed.  What it means is that the indexer will walk the folder hierarchy of those datastores, and determine which folders have changes in them.  When it finds a folder that has changed, it will go into it and look for the items that have changed (added/modified/deleted), and only process items that have changed.

If you were seeing a complete reindex, or items indexed resetting to 0, or were seeing something like what I described above without having any of those add-ins involved (or with Outlook 2007), then that is not expected behavior and could be a bug, incompatibility, or some form of corruption.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Windows Desktop Search 3.01 for XP

« on: April 02, 2007, 04:54 PM »

Try right clicking on the taskbar and then in the Toolbars sub menu untick it (you can always re-enable it when you need it)

Also - you could try making sure the taskbar toolbars are unlocked and then dragging the left bar of the WDS toolbar to the right. Not sure if that will work (I haven't got it installed at the mo) but it works for most toolbars.

-Carol Haynes (April 02, 2007, 04:45 PM)

True, if you don't use the Deskbar you can always disable it and just use WINKEY+F to pop up the full search UI whenever you need it.  Personally, I made heavy use of the Deskbar when I was on XP (both for searching and app launching / aliases), which is part of the reason I wrote Start++ for Vista to make the start menu support some of the advanced Deskbar functionality that it doesn't have out-of-the-box.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Windows Desktop Search 3.01 for XP

« on: April 02, 2007, 04:05 PM »

Hi guys,

Brandon from the Windows Search team here.

WDS 3.01 (and Vista) do support indexing of Outlook, including Outlook 2003 (and everything else after Outlook 2000).  After installing WDS 3.01, the next time you run Outlook it should set itself up for indexing.  If you have Outlook running, try restarting it and then looking in the Indexing Options control panel again.

You do NOT have to change the settings for PST files, and in fact you should not.  WDS does not index PST files, it indexes Outlook items via the MAPI protocol - so in order for the contents of a PST to be indexed it must be loaded in Outlook and Outlook must be running.  There are a number of reasons for this, including authentication which Outlook handles automatically.

As for when indexing occurs - After the initial index is built, WDS will receive notifications every time a change is made to the filesystem or to Outlook.  It will then put those notifications in a queue, and process them in the background.  If you are using the PC (or there is high CPU usage, hard disk usage, etc), those notifications will be processed more slowly.  If your PC is idle, they will be processed immediately.  You can also use the WDS tray icon / status window to control the indexer.  Pressing "Index Now" will process the notification queue immediately.  Pressing "Snooze" will stop processing of notifications completely for the duration of the snooze operation, however notifications will still be queued so that WDS doesn't lose track of changes you've made (files deleted, moved, etc).

On a more modern PC, you can enable the "Index Now" function and just leave it enabled.  This is how I run my desktop systems, as it means the indexer always processed notifications immediately - keeping the index always up-to-date.  In my experience, this has no negative impact on performance.  But that will of course vary by your system and configuration.

As for comments about the Deskbar taking up too much space, that's why it was moved into the Start Menu on Vista =)  On Vista, you just click on the Start button and start typing (or press the Windows key then start typing) to perform a search.  Though you'd be surprised how often people ask to have the search box back on the Taskbar... no idea why, though.

Hope that helps address some of the questions/concerns here.  You can also visit my blog where I frequently write about WDS and Vista.  http://brandonlive.com  Or e-mail me, brandon[AT]brandonlive.com