@phitsc:"You might be confusing the Microsoft Indexing Service with Windows Search. The FARR Windows Search plugin will let you query the Windows (Desktop) Search index, which I think is different to the Indexing Service. I have Windows Search running and to be honest I don't think it is influencing my machine's performance noticeably. I have the indexing service disabled as well by the way."
Well, it seems that maybe I was not confusing things after all, and that
the Indexing Service is involved. This is how I found out:
1. I disabled GDS (Google Desktop Search), which I had been using already to search approx 1,774,000 items - including emails, chats, web history and files (the latter numbering approx 1,649,000).
2. I installed WDS (Windows Desktop Search) with no problems.
3. I installed the FARR plugin with no problems.
4. The plugin worked well - it found files and file properties really fast.
5. However, I wanted to be able to search for specific strings of text in any and all of my documents - including MS Office files, .txt, .pdf and inside .zip files.
6. When I started to configure WDS to do that, I was told that in order to do it, the Indexing Service had to be enabled (I had disabled it ages ago) on my drive. Enabling the Indexing Service was the last thing I had wanted to do - it was a known resource hog that lowered the PC's performance.
So, regrettably, the FARR plugin and WDS have been uninstalled and GDS - which had always worked brilliantly for me - has been re-enabled.
I would thus tend to go back to and repeat my earlier comment that this FARR plugin would be great if it could be made to work with GDS - except that, after this experience and having given the matter some more thought since making that comment, I now wonder if the plugin wouldn't just duplicate the normal GDS search box functionality which pops into action readily enough when I type [Ctrl-SPACE].
In other words, what would the plugin be able to add over and above what you can already do with the GDS search functionality? (I have already tried HalfTone and found it duplicative and redundant.)
One benefit of this experience was the discovery that GDS was not to blame - as I had suspected it was - for a recurring problem I have had with my Centrino Duo CPU for some months. The problem was sporadic cascading episodes of CPU high occupancy (48% plus) by some processes (including FARR), one after another in succession, where the only resolution was to kill any process that went CPU-high (enter Process Tamer -
). One of the processes that would sometimes be thus affected was the Windows Explorer shell! This problem continued to manifest itself even whilst GDS was completely disabled.
Hope this is helpful or of use to someone.
