
Skepticism after Windows 10 search failure - weare138
https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2020/02/06/windows-10-warning-serious-failure-provokes-questions-and-anger/#7eb5ac7d6a52
======
makecheck
The search behaves “as if” it’s using randomly-ordered keys in a random source
dictionary, and it’s maddening.

If I type what seems to be the same 3 letters a few times in a row, the result
is always different: one time it acts like the app isn’t even installed,
another time it finds the app (first choice), another time it finds some other
random sub-component instead of the app with a weird file extension. Oh, and
my favorite: sometimes it finds multiple things but only after a delay,
meaning that just as I hit Enter the top hit _changes_ and I end up opening
something entirely unintentional (bonus points if the mistaken choice is
something that takes longer to launch, freezing the machine).

They need: (1) stability in the UI ( _never_ mess with something once it is
highlighted), and (2) stability in the lookup (the same input produces the
same set in the same order, _every single time_ or it’s useless).

~~~
SturgeonsLaw
If anyone from Microsoft happens to be reading this thread, please read the
above comment, then re-read it. It's a spot-on description of the problems and
solutions for Windows search.

Edit: and just to expand on a point the commenter made, the results would be
more valuable if it prioritised in an order like this:

1) Something the user has pinned

2) Something the user has launched a bunch of times

3) The shortcut leads to an .exe that's likely to be the main program file

4) Anything else

~~~
thebruce87m
5\. Never anything on the web

~~~
steverb
There's a registry setting to turn that off thank God.

I LIKE Windows 10, but that particular "feature" is a no go for me.

------
nmfisher
It's amusing (and infuriating) that file search - IMO, one of _the_ most
important features for a desktop O/S - has been utterly broken in Windows
since Vista.

On Windows 10, half the time it just hangs with "Searching files", displaying
zero results. The other half, search simply says "Nothing found", even when I
_know_ there is a match. I just tested it with %USERPROFILE%/.docker - open up
File Explorer and search for ConfigVersion that appears in config.json. Nada.

I have to resort to cygwin/grep any time I want a search that actually works.

I never had this problem pre-Vista. I don't know how they managed to go
backwards on such a fundamental feature.

~~~
qalmakka
I personally never use search tools; at least, not with files I've created
myself. IMHO organising correctly your files using aptly named directories and
sticking to that is much more effective than dumping stuff around the
filesystem and then having to rely on search in order to untangle the mess.
That's why I tend to disable desktop icons; in this way I always have to force
myself into opening a file manager and actually decide where the files should
be put into.

~~~
kranner
> IMHO organising correctly your files using aptly named directories

I have a lot of ebooks on my computer (> 10000). One problem with organising
books and other PDFs is that sometimes they fall into multiple categories.
(Should a new scientific article on lucid dreaming go into 'brain and
cognitive science' or 'meditation' or 'hypnosis' or 'sleep' or 'self
improvement'?) I could dump each new file into the directory representing the
first category that comes to mind and make symbolic links from directories
referring to other categories, but in the end the number of categories is
practically endless. Search is in practice the only workable solution.

~~~
frabert
You can add tags to files instead of putting them in folders, I believe

~~~
kranner
Yes but conceptually it amounts to manual classification into multiple
categories, which is just neverending work in my experience.

Manual classification is still useful to classify documents according to
labels that are not present as strings in the books' contents though.

------
Zanni
Of all the things I hate about Windows, unified search is the worst. If I want
to search the web, I'll search the web--there's an app for that, the browser.
Let me just search my hard drive, please. I didn't experience this bug, but if
I had, I'd be furious that I couldn't search my own local files without
somehow getting an internet service involved.

~~~
chapium
What is the alternative? Mac does the exact same with spotlight.

~~~
mthoms
Spotlight search is 100% local unless "Spotlight Suggestions" is enabled. Even
then, the search works exactly the same but is augmented with online content
(like sports scores, weather, suggested websites, etc) where relevant.

------
Multicomp
I got multiple people to install voidtools everything and open shell as a
result of this bad update.

I asked them after we applied the patch if they wanted me to revert the
changes, but they refused, stating that having instant local only search and a
normal start menu was a dream come true.

That is beside the point that if Microsoft can no longer even produce a wimp
interface without third-party software needed to get us back to the baseline
of Windows 7, that does not bode well for them.

~~~
nocturnial
I also use O&O shutup. It's portable and needs to be run only once and perhaps
after a windows update. Lately, the windows updates doesn't seem to alter the
changes I made using shutup.

It's a convenience tool. If you look up everything you can do it all manually.

~~~
Shank
Everything is a search engine, not at all related to O&O shutup.

~~~
nocturnial
I never mentioned everything, I never said shutup was a search engine.. Not
everything in this thread is related to "everything", some things are related
to windows dailing home to ms hq.

dang: I'm done with this bullshit, it's ok to delete my account.

~~~
BubRoss
You replied to someone talking about Everything.

------
Ididntdothis
Windows 10 search is a weird beast anyways. Sometimes it finds things,
sometimes it doesn’t. On my work machines it often doesn’t even find items
from the start menu.

~~~
whoopdedo
Look at how much the results change based on small changes to the input. Type
three letters in a name and get a lot of things that aren't what you want.
Type the fourth letter and the exact thing you're looking for jumps to the
top. But if you add the fifth letter it goes away. I feel like it's trying to
be too clever or, because it assumes the input is coming from voice
recognition, it doesn't trust that what you typed is actually what you "said".
So instead of compensating for potentially mistyped queries it searches for
results that are nearby in audible space.

~~~
tanseydavid
Thanks to both of you for mentioning this.

Every time I encounter this strange behavior in WIN10 -- I am so _dumbstruck_
by it each time it still feels like it must have been a "glitch-in-the-
matrix".

I mean, because no one would really release software like that, would they? At
least not a multi-billion software behemoth like MS? Right? </sarc>

~~~
desc
I know why this happens.

It happens because someone doesn't understand that search rankings vs. queries
have to have a 'smooth' solution, and thinks they can tweak a few weightings
here and there to get the results they think are 'correct' for the very
specific cases they have in mind, without realising that this has a knock-on
effect on the _entire scoring space_ and you get odd singularities and stuff
popping up as a result.

The people in question should not be touching anything even distantly related
to a computer in any professional context.

~~~
mattmanser
I try not to say things like that anymore, you've never met the person and
have no idea of the context or their skills.

Could be that they were forced to change it at the 11th hour just before
Windows 10 was being demo'd and it was never changed back. Could be a
committee decision. Could be the programmer hated the surveillance installed
by MS and so deliberately made the search bad.

~~~
desc
The 'someone' in question probably wasn't the engineer.

I'd bet the engineer was listening to the 'someone' saying things like 'why
don't you just' or 'it just needs to do this', or other things including the
word 'just'.

I'd bet the engineer tried to explain the realities of how this stuff works,
to 'someone' who's job didn't involve understanding what they were asking for,
and reacted by demanding with the word 'just' instead of pretending to ask.

------
desc
Can't say I ran into this particular bug, but I tend not to trust the search
on Windows much anyway. I myself have implemented better text/prefix matching
and ranking using a very simple SQLite database schema, on a _far_ larger
dataset than 'the local machine', yet Microsoft repeatedly fail at a task
which should succumb easily even to brute-force approaches.

They don't get to claim that it's a harder problem than indexing a hard disk
without first explaining why they think they should retain the use of their
fingers for continuing to send search terms over a network after I, as the
owner of the hardware and 'owner' of the OS instance have made a concerted
effort to turn that shit _off_.

~~~
jodrellblank
Jeffrey Snover[1] likes to say that "Microsoft is incapable of sustained
error", yet they've been incapable of building a good search for at least
15-20 years that I've experienced. Bing search is no competitor to Google,
Explorer filesystem search is slow and untrustworthy, the search which
integrates desktops to Windows server indexing of fileshares is slow and
untrustworthy, on-premises SharePoint search has never worked well for finding
documents for me, Start Menu search is the worst at matching plain text
strings in short names year after year, Windows version after Windows version,
local Outlook Search wasn't great, Outlook search backed by Exchange isn't
great, and it goes easily back to Joel on Software's blog post[2] of _2004_
where he says

> _Just do me a favor and search the damned hard drive, quickly, for the
> string I typed, using full-text indexes and other technologies that were
> boring in 1973._

That's still what I want, and _still_ what they don't do.

[1] PowerShell originator, now "Chief Architect for the Azure Infrastructure
and Management Group" at Microsoft.

[2] [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-
lost...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost-the-api-
war/)

~~~
jiggawatts
Here's the thing: I've built, back in 2005, a full-text search for 60 GB of
small-text data that would typically return results in under 15ms. This was
using 100% Microsoft-native technology, like C# and SQL.

How much data does the Start Menu search _have_ to index, total? A few 100KB?
Something like that. This is assuming a fresh install, no documents, no third
party apps.

A modern CPU can simply _brute force_ through that amount of data and perform
nearly arbitrary subtext matching, without any fancy indexing techniques, in
something like a handful of _microseconds_. Even in an absolute worst-case of
cross-process pointer chasing out into uncached main memory, you're talking a
few tens of milliseconds, max.

Yet, a fresh install of any version of Windows, including Server editions,
simply flat out _fails_ to find control panel items or shortcuts even if their
names are typed exactly. Many _hours_ later it'll find _some_ of them, not
necessarily all. Days later, _perhaps_ it'll reach a 100% match, but that's
certainly not guaranteed.

For me, often having to use freshly installed Windows VMs, I see a nearly 100%
failure rate for this component.

It's just absurd that this passed QA.

------
pacifika
Microsoft doesn’t build Windows with the consumer as the priority. Microsoft
first, then big business, then advertisers.

I used to find this aggravating but it’s better to accept it and move on.

~~~
craftinator
To me, Microsoft's PR message has always amounted to "Windows users are either
too busy, dumb, disorganized, impatient, or unfamiliar with their systems to
know how to do things, so we try to think for them." It was amazing how much
more productive and powerful I felt switching to Linux. Like, I could suddenly
FIX problems without having to install some sketchy .exe or driver. Can't
understand why people stick with Windows when they have other options.

~~~
kemotep
I definitely roll my eyes when people say that on Windows everything "just
works".

I have to fix (or just deal with the fact that I cannot do anything about it)
just as many things that break or go wrong with Windows as I do with Linux.

Hacking around with the registry is just that. A hack job to roughly get
Windows to behave until the next update breaks it.

At least on Linux you have the whole system open to you and can roll back
changes or apply patches with much more control.

~~~
stinos
But for some people it just does work. Without the need for any hacks, just
some tweaking of settings. So when I see people saying they roll there eyes
when they they see those claims, I say: think a bit further, consider other
factors. Like, it depends on what you do with it perhaps, on the hardware?

~~~
kemotep
I agree that for some people, they stick with Windows because their hardware
and software does just work. Compatibility with the things you do is
important.

However we are in a thread about how Windows 10 search just up an broke and
whose only permanent fix is to disable part of it in the registry.

The search function barely works compared to alternatives too.

People can absolutely stick with Windows but I was referring to people who
argue that they cannot try alternatives because they don't "just work" and you
have use a command line and do all this configuration stuff.

I have less problems on Linux and most of them are of my own creation, trying
to run software in wine or use hardware with non-free drivers.

It helps to adapt to doing things the Linux way when using Linux instead of
contiuing to operate in a Windows mindset.

~~~
stinos
_people who argue that they cannot try alternatives because they don 't "just
work"_

Fair enough, but your argumentation still sounds like 'works for me so it's
all fine' which is the main point I was addressing. I.e. it's not because you
have less problems on linux that others do as well, and hence they could make
a rather valid argument that they gave up trying. Which doesn't mean all
people complaining like that are right of course. It's never so black/white.

------
pratio
The state of this webpage and most i visit on a daily basis makes me sad.
Can’t just open a page and read stuff anymore. There’s a vide being loaded and
before that finishes the cookie popup comes up.

~~~
larkeith
Disabling Javascript by default avoids most of this, though it breaks some
sites.

~~~
catalogia
I go one step further and disable CSS by default too. More often than not,
disabling CSS improves webpages.

~~~
larkeith
I'll have to try that out, somehow I'd not considered that.

------
jimnotgym
I have an easier fix than most people on here.

I would like the start menu search to be confined to the programs installed on
the computer. To search settings make me click the 'cog' first. To search for
files there is Explorer, which is already better at the job. To search the web
I will use Firefox to access a search engine.

Wouldn't that be simpler?

~~~
Noumenon72
Wow, no. I have no idea what folder a lot of my files are in, because I can
find them with Search. And that extra click before accessing settings would be
a huge downgrade for me. I am a fan of Windows search, it's one of the biggest
improvements to usability they've ever made. Even if it worked better in
Windows 7.

------
lentil_soup
I don't understand. I don't want my start menu to search my files or the
internet or be smart in any way, I just want it to show my installed programs
or apps or whatever you want to call them. If I want to search my files I have
a program for that, if I want to search the internet I open my browser. Why do
we have to over complicate things! Who asked for this?

~~~
blondin
they failed to find a good place for that search, but the feature, itself, is
extremely valuable.

on the mac, for example, spotlight search is part of things i do on autopilot.
that's how they should have presented that search functionality. a keyboard
shortcut, big search field in the middle of the screen... cortana shouldn't
have been the front focus here...

i still use it though. would be sad to see it go! i use it to see where stuff
and settings that were obvious and easy to find before are now hidden.

~~~
orev
Sounds like Launchy

~~~
porker
I still use Launchy on Windows 10, alongside the native search. The plugins
Launchy has like for Putty integration make it invaluable.

It's a shame it's no longer developed.

~~~
1wd
Have you tried Wox? [https://github.com/Wox-
launcher/Wox](https://github.com/Wox-launcher/Wox)

~~~
porker
Hadn't heard of it until now, taking a look. Thanks.

------
awiesenhofer
I gave up on windows builtin search a long time ago because its so frustrating
- Wox launcher and especially Everything Search is my substitute of choice.
Its also incredibly fast!

Edit, Links: [http://www.wox.one](http://www.wox.one)
[https://www.voidtools.com](https://www.voidtools.com)

~~~
worble
Just a note - looking at Wox, the official repo seems to be unmaintained,
there's appears to be an active fork here however:
[https://github.com/jjw24/Wox/](https://github.com/jjw24/Wox/)

------
crispinb
Every time one of the many irritations I have with Linux makes me consider
reinstalling Windows to give it another try, this kind of thing is just what
comes to mind and stops me.

~~~
boudin
In my opinion, there's issues with all OS, but Linux is the only one that is
documented enough, can be customized enough and as enough of an ecosystem to
fix my problems or at least find workarounds. With Windows or Macos the only
solution is too often to live with the ecosystem as thought by Apple or
Microsoft, liking it or not, which I just can't stand personnally...

------
mbeex
The only things I'm searching this way are related to Windows' own ambiguities
and opaqueness. For example, something like classic 'Control Panel' (not quite
true, 'bookmarked' it after a while) or special setting menues. Most of these
issues are caused by the dual UI.

All other things - in particular file search - are much more comfortable with
Total Commander, a software providing a sophisticated consistent interface for
more than 20 years now, superseding any Windows versions internal abilities
easily (including the whole explorer functionality).

------
thrower123
Even the most insane Start menu shouldn't have enough items that you couldn't
just put all the items it contains in an in-memory list and do a dumb
startsWith search, and be lightning fast and more reliable than whatever
insanity it is doing out of the box these days.

------
aj7
About a year ago, I switched from a Windows 10 quad-core Xeon system to an
iMac Pro. The single greatest performance enhancement, among many, is the
speed and accuracy of the macOS search.

~~~
pdimitar
Seconded. Not to mention how amazingly fast the iMac Pro is in general.

Still thinking of buying Alfred but I'm undecided. Have you tried it?

------
cherrera303
I quit using Windows search a long long time ago but I have to admit that it
worked better in the WinXP days.

Currently using SwiftSearch with very fast results, as it reads directly from
the NTFS MFT. No databases, no indexing, no background processes or services.
There's also UltraSearch that works with the same idea but is more polished.

------
bensonn
My search stopped working months ago, typing anything blanked out whole the
Start menu. I figured Windows was punishing me for turning Cortana off in the
settings. At some point in the last few weeks a Windows update fixed my
search. I agree with a lot of posters- I won't use Windows search. It doesn't
do what I want or need, and does not function how I expect.

I had never heard of Everything but just downloaded it and tried it. It is
fast! I typed in YYYY-MM-DD for a few different dates. I have never used
OneDrive, do not want to use OneDrive and wish I could uninstall OneDrive.
OneDrive creates ~10 new files every day.

The broken (now fixed but still stupid) search is just a symptom of a bloated
quantity-over-quality, walled-garden, rented-not-owned, OSaaS.

------
kwhitefoot
Frustration with Windows Start menu search drove me to install Keypirinha:
[https://keypirinha.com/](https://keypirinha.com/)

Specifically: I type ope and the top of the list is Skype, then the Opera
folder, then Office. When I add an r then About Your PC is at the top. then
opera.pak, and at last Opera. But even if I type Opera the hit I expect is
still not at the top of the list.

With Keypirinha it remembers which one I choose and promotes it to the top.

And that was before Search stopped working. If I didn't need SQL Server and
Visual Studio for the work I do I would not have Windows on any of my own
hardware.

------
ReptileMan
Honestly for non indexed search VoidTools everything is leaps and bounds
before windows search. It searches directly in the NTFS dictionaries and is
blazing fast.

------
yummypaint
To have search work viably as a menu it has to repeatable, which generally
involves delivering desired results. More anti-user hubris from microsoft.

------
mreome
I just wish I could get search to stop returning applications I uninstalled
months ago (and yes I've tried deleting and rebuilding the index).

~~~
wizzwizz4
Perhaps there's a shortcut in Quick Launch? (A Windows 95 feature they decided
to get rid of but never quite managed to completely remove.)

------
iamAtom
Recently my respect to apple is growing more and more because of issues like
this. Apple is always criticised for lack of innovations compared to its
competitors but their attention to smaller details and ensuring their products
just "work" proved to be more valuable to customers than dozens of broken
features.

Edit: Of course there are some exceptions like apple maps

------
jammygit
“we all found out that our local search boxes are somehow dependent on some
service working at Microsoft.” She attacked the company for a lack of
transparency and gave it a maximum ‘Pinocchio score’ for a lack of trust.

I miss Ubuntu (minus their amazon scandal...)

------
jmc5788
Classic Shell has continued to make Windows 8/10 far more functional, IMO. The
start menu wasn’t broken, and simple is good if you ask me.

[http://www.classicshell.net/](http://www.classicshell.net/)

------
BubRoss
If you want to see an example of what file search could be like, use the
program 'everything'. I have no idea how microsoft creates something so
terrible in the first place, let one leaves it that way.

------
dekalbcountyman
Hey does this effect LTSC? Like, I read the article and looked at the comments
and Search works fine and great for me, always have

Been a macOS user since the start of my career, but I have been enjoying
Windows 10 LTSC

------
rkagerer
I've used FileLocator Pro as my Explorer CTRL+F replacement for years, and I
love it.

Fast, doesn't rely on fragile indexing, and finds stuff Microsoft always seems
to miss.

------
s_T_e_v_o
If I need to search for something outside my policy limited range, I use
explorer++. It will find it, and it will allow you to have tabs and to store
favorites.

------
asdfpoiu10
Anyone catch the IP or know the URL search phones home to? I suspect I would
not be the only one who would want to pi-hole this.

------
NicoJuicy
A good search app is called "Search Everything" :)

~~~
pedro2
You assume everyone has permission to install software :)

------
basicplus2
Does this mean that microsoft could be keeping copies of the meta data of
every file on every windows computer on their servers and doing the search
there?

~~~
xkemp
Well, yes, they obviously _can_ as in _could_ , as could any other OS.

This incident doesn't actually show any local files being sent to MS, however.
Online search can be disable with a registry entry, which proves that the
online service is not necessary for searching local files. It's far more
likely that a connection error for the bing search is just triggering some bug
that then prevents local results from being shown.

