4. Disable Search Indexing
I personally don’t mind the new search too much. It still hogs a lot of resources though. To turn it off completely:
- Go to my computer, right click on C: drive, go to the General tab, and uncheck Index this drive for faster searching, select Include subfolders and files.
- If you want, you can just remove any extra areas of search, so you can keep your fast searching for some areas.
I personally find the indexing of control panel options and start menu items to be a blessing, so I would leave those alone. Just find items in the tree that you really don’t wish to be indexed (like your documents).
5. While you are at it, fix the rest of your search options
It is often that I do searches for text in files, like a method use in a PHP file, or maybe something in a java file. Regardless of the situation, Windows Vista has a very limited number of file extensions flagged for full text searching, which causes you to get ‘no results’ when you know there are some.
- Open Control panel and type in ‘indexing’ into the search box (or you can do this from your start menu, but many people turn it off).
- Select ‘Indexing Options’
- Select Advanced Button
- Select ‘File Types’ Tab
- In this list you will see a list of extensions. When you click on most of them, the bottom radio button will change from ‘index properties only’ or ‘index properties and file contents’
- Honestly, index properties only is pretty useless for what most people will use search for (i.e. really only search by date).
- Uncheck a box to have it removed from search. This can be done for a variety of extensions that honestly, you don’t want in search anyway. It will actually help your results.
- Change the radio button to ‘index properties and file contents’ to have these file types included in your searches (should be set for word docs, etc and any other text-based files you search for)
6. Get rid of the sidebar
Pretty self explanatory. It’s a heavy and ugly. If you use it, great, if you don’t reclaim some desktop space. Install googles version. Or yahoos.
7. Defender has a use?
Yes, windows defender actually has a purpose!
- Open it up
- Click on tools
- Click on Software Explorer
- This will let you select groups of items, the default is Startup Programs. Now you can see that oh, Open Office quickstart is there, and I can just disable it there.
Items in this list are very likely to be programs that are running 100% of the time your computer is on, so if you can live without them, kill em.
Almost to the end of part 1. The final page is filled with some more advanced things you can do, but they can take a bit of time…
