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Why are people confused by this? It's simple: open control panel administrative tools computer management services and applications indexing service system query the catalog. Almost as easy as F3 to search.
The Inquirerer: Microsoft reinvents its own wheel.
In a smack-your-forehead-and-say-'Doh!' piece of software design, the standard Windows search feature doesn't automatically send your search terms to the indexing service, it just carries on searching in the same old way, by examining every single file on the disk. And woe betide WinXP users if it stumbles across a compressed ZIP file while searching, because your PC will grind to a halt while it decompresses the file to peek inside.
To actually use Indexing Services as it was originally intended, you need to utter a few magic words, which Microsoft has chosen to keep secret from the common user.
First, turn on Indexing Service, and leave it alone for a few hours so it can index all your drives. Then open the Windows file search box as you would normally.- for example, by choosing it on the Start menu.
Here's where the magic starts. First of all, type only in the space labelled 'A word or phrase in the file' (or in Windows 2000, 'Containing Text').
Now, to find a word inside a file, simply preface it with '!'. And, to find a filename, preface it with '@filename'.
So typing '!vacation' and hitting 'enter' will instantly find files containing the word 'vacation'. And '@filename vacation' will instantly display all filenames containing the complete word vacation. You can add a '*' to the end to find other words like 'vacationing'.
Via One/Northwest
