Windows 7 search always returns no results
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Friday, November 13, 2009 10:06 PMNo matter what I type into the search box in the start menu, windows 7 search always returns "No items match your search." This happens even with things that I know for certain exist. (e.g. cmd)
FWIW I once uninstalled windows search because I didn't think I would use it, but then I realized that this removes ALL search functions and not just the realtime search (which didn't happen in windows XP.) When I reinstalled it, this started happening. No matter what I try (e.g. uninstalling and reinstalling again) this still happens.
All Replies
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Saturday, November 14, 2009 12:01 AM Hi Rakeesh_j,
What works for me is configuring folder options > search as pictured:
- Proposed As Answer by Backsmith Tuesday, August 10, 2010 7:58 AM
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Saturday, November 14, 2009 2:56 AMI just changed mine to match yours, and it still doesn't work.
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Saturday, November 14, 2009 3:36 AMDoes anyone know what files he should register?
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Monday, November 16, 2009 2:53 AMModerator
Hi,
You may try to rebuild the index to check the issue.
If it does not work, I would like to suggest you run a System File Checker to scan and repair the system files.
What’s the result?
Arthur Li - MSFT -
Monday, November 16, 2009 11:38 PMI rebuilt the index (it now has 14,000 some odd objects indexed) and ran the system file checker which went through without a hitch.
Still doesn't work. I can type something like 'cmd' in the search box in the start menu, and it returns "No items match your search."
Don't suppose there is somebody who could try to uninstall windows search (via unchecking it in control panel "programs and features" and "turn windows features on or off",) reboot, reinstall it via the same means, reboot, and see if it works proper? I am thinking this is what broke it for me, but I am not sure how to undo the damage. -
Tuesday, November 17, 2009 8:48 AMModerator
Hi,
If Windows Search was disabled recently, you may also run System Restore to fix it.
If it does not work, I would like to suggest you import the Windows Search registry to repair it.
If it still cannot work, I also would like to suggest you run System File Checker.
If the issue persists, you also can perform an In-Place upgrade to repair the system.
Good luck!
Arthur Li - MSFT- Marked As Answer by Arthur_LiMicrosoft Contingent Staff, Moderator Friday, November 20, 2009 8:34 AM
- Unmarked As Answer by Rakeesh_j Wednesday, November 25, 2009 1:33 PM
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Friday, November 20, 2009 9:44 PM Respectfully, I've already tried all of these as I mentioned earlier, except system restore due to having done this around the time when I first installed windows 7.
I don't want to do an in-place upgrade because that will wipe out a bunch of other settings I've done all in the name of fixing the search app. Perhaps this is simply a bug with the search program that results from uninstalling and reinstalling it? I don't suppose there is any way to forward this to one of the microsoft engineers?- Proposed As Answer by daniel.pereira Tuesday, October 04, 2011 2:05 PM
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Friday, November 20, 2009 10:57 PMMaybe this will help:
http://www.voidtools.com/
Seesons greetings! -
Saturday, November 21, 2009 11:45 AMI had the same problem and spent the last two days trying to find the solution. I finally stumbled upon the registry key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
There were a bunch of NoSearchXXXInStartMenu values set to 1. I don't know how they got there, but I deleted them (actually deleted the whole "Explorer" subkey since they were the only values there) and everything seems to be working now.
Hope this helps!
-JT -
Saturday, November 21, 2009 3:25 PMThe explorer subkey doesn't seem to exist for me. However I am curious how you got to where you did. How did you begin to troubleshoot the start menu search box? Perhaps I can find the solution to my problem by starting out the same way you did.
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Sunday, November 22, 2009 4:58 AMThat's too bad. I was really hoping I was onto something that would help. It's hard for me to say exactly what steps I took. I first had the problem that the indexer would run and then report that 0 items were indexed. That problem turned out to be the "Allow service to interact with desktop" checkbox in the Windows Search service "Log On" property being checked. I don't know how that got checked either. Once I got it to build an index, I still got the "No items match your search" result no matter what I typed into the search box. I looked at so many web pages having to do with Windows Search problems that I'd have a hard time recreating my steps. A lot of them had to do with indexing problems which you don't seem to have. The page that mentioned the "NoSearch" keys was this one: http://www.winvistaclub.com/t78.html
One thing I did that you might want to try is to create a new account (if you don't already have a second account) and see if search works in that account. I created a "test" account and the search seemed to work fine in that account. I spent a lot of time trying to compare the accounts to see what processes and services were running on each account. That led nowhere since they seemed to be the same. I tried copying the "Windows Search" registry key from one account to the other, and that did nothing. I used "procmon" to see what files and registry keys were being accessed from each account, but that didn't really help either. So I guess what I'm trying to say is I just got lucky.
A couple of notes that you might find useful:
If you uninstall the Windows Search feature, the index is not deleted. Its default location is "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Search". I deleted that whole subdirectory (you may have to change some permissions/ownership to do it) just in case there was something wrong with the index, but I can't really say it was necessary.
My installation of Windows 7 was an upgrade from Vista. I never used Windows Search in Vista and I probably disabled/uninstalled it at some point. Maybe that's when I got those "NoSearch" keys.
Good luck! If I can be of any help, just let me know.
-JT -
Tuesday, November 24, 2009 2:29 AMModerator
Hi,
If you would not like to perform the previous suggestions I provided, you may also perform the following steps to rebuild the index and check the issue.
1. Click on the Start Button, type "cmd" (without quotation marks) in the Start Search box. Right-click CMD listed above and click "Run as administrator".
2. At the command prompt, copy the following command to stop the Search Service:
net stop wsearch
3. Click on the Start Button, type "regedit" (without quotation marks) in the Start Search box and press Enter.
(Click "Continue" if User Account Control prompts for permission)
4. Navigate to the following registry key by expanding the "+" beside the registry tree in the left pane:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows Search]
5. Right click on "Windows Search", click "Export"; please name the file as "RegBackup" (without quotation marks) and then save it to the C:\ drive as a backup.
Note: In case we need to undo the modification, we can double click this RegBackup.reg file to restore the registry key.
7. Right-click on “Windows Search” and choose Permissions. On the Security tab, verify that Administrator is the owner and has full control of the key.
8. Within the "Windows Search" registry key, find the SetupCompletedSuccessfully value on the right pane. Double-click SetupCompletedSuccessfully and change its value to 0.
9. Delete the following registry keys:
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows Search\Applications\windows
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows Search\CatalogNames\windows
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows Search\Databases\windows
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows Search\Gather\windows
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows Search\Gathering Manager\Applications\windows
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows Search\UsnNotifier\windows
If the key cannot be deleted, please perform the following steps to take ownership first
a. Right-click the key and click "Permission"
b. Click the "Advanced" button.
c. On the "Owner" tab, verify your account is the current owner. If not, click "Other users or groups" to add your account. Then select your account, check "Replace owner on subcontainers and objects" and click OK on the windows.
10. Click on the Start Button, type "cmd" (without quotation marks) in the Start Search box. Right-click CMD listed above and click "Run as administrator".
11. At the command prompt, copy the following command to delete the default index location folder:
rd %ProgramData%\Microsoft\Search\Data\Applications\Windows /S /Q
12. Start the Search Service again by typing the following:
net start wsearch
After approximately one minute, check the SetupCompletedSuccessfully registry value and it should now be set to 1 and the Search service should rebuild the index database.
What’s the result?
Arthur Li - MSFT -
Wednesday, November 25, 2009 12:50 PM
Hi,
If you would not like to perform the previous suggestions I provided, you may also perform the following steps to rebuild the index and check the issue.
1. Click on the Start Button, type "cmd" (without quotation marks) in the Start Search box. Right-click CMD listed above and click "Run as administrator".
Problem with that though: the start search box doesn't work :) Just typing in cmd says "No items match your search." It doesn't matter what I type, it always says that. This is the problem at hand. But I know of other ways of doing what you are asking me to do.
I stopped the service, modified the registry as you instructed, deleted that directory, and restarted the service. All it did was replace all of those keys I deleted verbatim, and changed the setupcompletedsuccessfully value back to 1. Still can't find any results on the start menu.
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Wednesday, November 25, 2009 12:59 PM
One thing I did that you might want to try is to create a new account (if you don't already have a second account) and see if search works in that account.
This is actually getting somewhere. I just turned on the guest account and it turns out that it works fine in that account - from the start menu, everything. It must be a user specific setting that is messed up. Now the tricky part is finding it :) Unfortunately that is way easier said than done. I'll start looking at this tomorrow but if anybody gets any ideas of where I should look meanwhile let me know. -
Wednesday, November 25, 2009 1:18 PM FIGURED IT OUT:
There's a registry key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
In this key there are two values (both hex dword)
Start_SearchFiles
Start_SearchPrograms
Uninstalling Windows Search sets the value of both of these to zero, when they default to something else. However, reinstalling Windows Search does not restore them to their default setting like it probably should. By manually setting both of them to 1, it re-enabled the windows search function from the start menu. Somebody might want to notify one of the Microsoft software engineers that they should correct this issue so that reinstalling Windows Search properly configures this registry key back to its default setting, that way if anybody else does what I just did they'll avoid the same headache I went through. (I don't know how to contact them myself.)
I am using Windows 7 but I think this issue probably applies to Vista as well.
How I came to this conclusion :
Reno Jim's suggestion that I try under a different account lead me to the solution. Noticing that it worked under a different account, I figured were going to be looking under HKEY_CURRENT_USER. Given that the start menu is a part of explorer, I navigated down to software/microsoft/windows/currentversion/explorer, and looking through a few different keys I noticed these two interestingly named values under the "advanced" key. Googling their names lead me to a tweak site that showed what they do, and apparently setting them to zero results in the situation I was in.- Marked As Answer by Rakeesh_j Wednesday, November 25, 2009 1:19 PM
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Friday, December 04, 2009 9:03 AMGlad to see you got it figured out! It's interesting how many ways the search can get screwed up. Right now I'm wondering why one of my Word docx files doesn't seem to get indexed but others in the same directory do. If I save it to a new name in the same directory the new file gets indexed, but the original still doesn't. Weird!
-JT -
Saturday, December 05, 2009 10:45 PMI have an update on that Start_SearchFiles registry entry.
I couldn't figure out why my "Test" account would return results from the C:\Users\Public directory but my normal account wouldn't. The Test account had Start_SearchFiles set to 2 and my normal account had it set to 1. Setting it to 2 in my normal account got the search to return results from the "Public" directories. I'm still trying to find out more information about that value.
Edit: I figured it out. Sometimes I make these things harder than they need to be. There's a item under "Customize" on the Start Menu properties page that controls the Start_SearchFiles entry. Under "Search other files and libraries" there are three options:
Don't search --------------------> 0
Search with public folders -----> 2
Search without public folders --> 1
-JT- Edited by Reno Jim Saturday, December 05, 2009 11:00 PM added info
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Wednesday, December 09, 2009 12:15 PMYeah I think 2 is the default setting.
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Wednesday, December 09, 2009 7:50 PMReno Jim solved it because his reg values correlate to grou policy stteings. That's why Rakeesh did not have those keys. which will only appear after group policy configuration from gpedit.msc. The keys Rakeesh refererd to are from start menu properties > customize the start menu GUI.
Seasons greetings! -
Tuesday, August 10, 2010 8:00 AM
I had same problem - zero search results in any search in the explorer box on top right of explorer window.
Clicked on restore defaults in folder options in control panel and Bingo all working again.
Using w7.
J
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Saturday, August 28, 2010 7:40 AM
FIGURED IT OUT:
There's a registry key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
In this key there are two values (both hex dword)
Start_SearchFiles
Start_SearchPrograms
Uninstalling Windows Search sets the value of both of these to zero, when they default to something else. However, reinstalling Windows Search does not restore them to their default setting like it probably should. By manually setting both of them to 1, it re-enabled the windows search function from the start menu. Somebody might want to notify one of the Microsoft software engineers that they should correct this issue so that reinstalling Windows Search properly configures this registry key back to its default setting, that way if anybody else does what I just did they'll avoid the same headache I went through. (I don't know how to contact them myself.)
I am using Windows 7 but I think this issue probably applies to Vista as well.
How I came to this conclusion :
Reno Jim's suggestion that I try under a different account lead me to the solution. Noticing that it worked under a different account, I figured were going to be looking under HKEY_CURRENT_USER. Given that the start menu is a part of explorer, I navigated down to software/microsoft/windows/currentversion/explorer, and looking through a few different keys I noticed these two interestingly named values under the "advanced" key. Googling their names lead me to a tweak site that showed what they do, and apparently setting them to zero results in the situation I was in.
You my friend are a genius!! thank you so much!!! -
Thursday, August 18, 2011 11:01 AM
Nothing of the above worked for me (didn' try the latest solution by Moderator Arthur though), but i did find a workaround for my problem.
As it turned out the search wasn't working when i navigated to "my documents" through the "libraries" in the "folder tree view". When i navigated to my docs from root directory myself, it is working fine.
Anyone know how come?
Q.
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Wednesday, November 23, 2011 12:55 PM
I had similiar issue, but for specific directories there were no results, even when using *.*, yet one directory level up it would work, but exclude that specific directory.
Seems that SYSTEM group/user was missing in the security settings for that particular folder, so I guess "search" was unable to access them.
Fixed by right click, select properties.
if SYSTEM is missing, Select security and click on EDIT, then ADD.
type SYSTEM into text box and "check names", then OK.
You might need to update the permissions for system as well.
After this the location could now be searched.
Press any key to continue... where's the "any" key? -
Thursday, November 24, 2011 8:05 PMthanks ZERO Tolerance! this work to me!
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Friday, June 22, 2012 12:21 PM SIMPLE SOLUTION (for me, at least). I ran into this problem where the Start search box only returned results from the start menu. I looked through the suggested registry keys and didn't find them, rebuilt my search index, etc., and eventually checked the Start Menu properties (Start, right-click on background around search box, select "Properties"). Click "Customize" to check the options. I found in my system that "Search other files and libraries" was set to "Don't search". I changed that to "Search with public folders", and the problem was solved. Note that this is the default setting for the search box, so you can use the "Use Default Settings" button at the bottom left if you want to set all the start menu options to their default. Worked like a charm.
- Proposed As Answer by BigJohnnyO Friday, June 22, 2012 12:23 PM
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Saturday, July 07, 2012 12:35 AMHi!
First, thanks a lot for your time and your answers!
Unfortunately none of them worked for me.
Here's what I did:
I had two hard disk partitions.
I formated "C" and reinstalled Windows 7. I kept the other partition for all my documents, etc.
Now the Windows search apparently only searches in "C".
There's one thing I didn't recognize before: In my "Computer", the partition "C" has got the Windows logo on its hard disk sign, my documents-partition has none on the hard disk sign.
Has anyone got an idea what the problem might be?
Alex -
Saturday, July 07, 2012 11:40 AMFinally I got the answer!
I right-clicked on my other partition and chose "include in library".
Now my Windows search immediately involves all my partitions.
Hopefully this might help others, too. -
Wednesday, August 08, 2012 7:48 PM
Start_SearchFiles existed with value of 2
Start_SearchPrograms did not existset first one to value of 1, did not work
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Friday, January 04, 2013 3:42 AMI imported the Windows Search Registry and it seems to have worked. Thank god, that was the most annoying problem ever
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Thursday, February 07, 2013 4:56 PM
FIGURED IT OUT:
There's a registry key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
In this key there are two values (both hex dword)
Start_SearchFiles
Start_SearchPrograms
Uninstalling Windows Search sets the value of both of these to zero, when they default to something else. However, reinstalling Windows Search does not restore them to their default setting like it probably should. By manually setting both of them to 1, it re-enabled the windows search function from the start menu. Somebody might want to notify one of the Microsoft software engineers that they should correct this issue so that reinstalling Windows Search properly configures this registry key back to its default setting, that way if anybody else does what I just did they'll avoid the same headache I went through. (I don't know how to contact them myself.)
I am using Windows 7 but I think this issue probably applies to Vista as well.
How I came to this conclusion :
Reno Jim's suggestion that I try under a different account lead me to the solution. Noticing that it worked under a different account, I figured were going to be looking under HKEY_CURRENT_USER. Given that the start menu is a part of explorer, I navigated down to software/microsoft/windows/currentversion/explorer, and looking through a few different keys I noticed these two interestingly named values under the "advanced" key. Googling their names lead me to a tweak site that showed what they do, and apparently setting them to zero results in the situation I was in.
Bless you Rakeesh, for you are learned and wise and generous in soul to come back and share this solution. I thought I was going to need all day to fix this, and you solved it in minutes with this tip. I really did not want to have to reformat & reinstall to get this fixed, but I do need and use file search on a daily basis. Thanks again. -
Tuesday, April 23, 2013 6:36 PMThe most simple solution to this issue is to rebuild the index. In Windows 7, go to the start menu and in the "run" textbox, enter "index options" (without quotes), then select Adavanced and Rebuild. Editing the windows registry not only increases the risks of further problems with the operating system, but can cause dire effects on the settings that future applications need to set. Additionally, you can choose the Modify button, on the original "Index Options" dialog box, and simply remove the directories that you no longer want indexed. The few additional minutes (or seconds in most cases) that indexing saves, is not worth the trouble it can cause in the long run, in my opinion.
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