back to article Microsoft promises a fix for Windows 10 zip file woes. In November

Microsoft has confirmed that, yes, that whole zip-file thing is indeed a bug and, er, no. It won’t be fixing it until November. But hey, how about a new Windows Search? Open zip file, cut, paste and… argh! A post by Microsoft on the software giant’s answers forum detailed the issue, which sees the OS silently skip files …

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  1. Chronos

    Windows Search

    Isn't that the bit of 7 that slowed everything to a crawl until you disabled indexing? It's that long ago I can't unforget since there's a script that runs on my PXE server after a doze infection that disables all the problematic services and I haven't had to do it manually for yonks.

    1. Test Man

      Re: Windows Search

      Nah, this is simply a change to the current indexer that exposes it to the entire set of folders (and is an opt-in option - not a default). As usual, after indexing searching any folders should be the usual quick self because the details are pulled from the indexed database.

      The current search (i.e. what's been in Windows since Vista) only indexes a few user folders, but a user can elect to search outside this, which means the searcher physically inspecting those folders which takes far longer.

      The old built-in search before Vista didn't have indexers so searching would actually mean the searcher going through whatever folder was specified to grab details, a process that takes a lot longer than just pulling the already-collated details from a database.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Windows Search

        "The old built-in search before Vista didn't have indexers so searching would actually mean the searcher going through whatever folder was specified to grab details, a process that takes a lot longer..."

        Uh, not really, especially when you gave it a root directory to search. Now searching for filenames should improve by about ~1sec (oh joy), but that's it. Searching file contents will always depend on the regex and FS speeds.

        The current windows search sucks. Ui sucks, syntax sucks, explorer sucks. Everything sucks. Give us back the little dog on the left with actual, logical, commonly used options. Windows sucks shamelessly.

        Windows is always dressed for Halloween.

        1. Dan 55 Silver badge

          Re: Windows Search

          Give us back the little dog on the left with actual, logical, commonly used options. Windows sucks shamelessly.

          That's the first thing I disabled on XP to get the 2000-style search. I do hope one day people won't think Windows 10 as it is now is good...

          1. bpfh

            Re: Windows Search

            On my personal setup, exclude C:\ from the search tree, then deactivate all services (the exclusion is hoping that it remembers the settings when some update happily reactivates the sodding thing again.

            Once that is sorted, install Agent Ransack. Only runs when I want and has a logical search interface, looks in every file in a directory and subfolders if I request, no more telling windows to search for *.* containing whereDidMyFunctionGo à la windows 95, only to find windows search won’t find it because .php is not linked to a recognised windows app extension without hitting the registry...

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Windows Search

        "The old built-in search before Vista didn't have indexers so searching would actually mean the searcher going through whatever folder was specified to grab details, [...]"

        At least on XP it found the files you wanted. The search on W7 often can't find things you know are in that directory - especially when you specify "content:".

        It used to be easy to check a directory's source files for occurrence of a particular variable or string. Now you have to go through them each in turn manually.

        1. JohnFen

          Re: Windows Search

          "The search on W7 often can't find things you know are in that directory - especially when you specify "content:"."

          Absolutely. And in Windows 10, things are even worse.

          1. Danny 14

            Re: Windows Search

            yup and the REALLY annoying thing is that file indexing service works brilliantly in 2008R2. in the server version it is fast once the index is built.

            1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

              Re: "file indexing service works brilliantly in 2008R2"

              I have solved the problem with Everything Search. Disabled Windows search, install Everything, let it do it's first indexing run and from that point on, searching is instant and real time.

              Like searching should be on computers that are a million times more powerful than the ones we started with last millennium.

              If a small group of open source developers can do that for (almost) free, Microsoft should bloody well be able to do it, but noooo, it had to take care of touchscreens and playskool UIs.

              1. Michael Kean

                Re: "file indexing service works brilliantly in 2008R2"

                Search Everything is indeed great, but it only searches filenames and not their contents; so there are times when Windows Search is useful still.

                I'm an IT guy who fixes random computers so I still end up bringing up an administrative command prompt and using DOS since at least I know dir /s /a file*.* will actually look everywhere.

              2. TReko

                Re: "file indexing service works brilliantly in 2008R2"

                Everything is superb, but it only searches file names. It indexes the MFT (Master File Table) in NTFS. It does not index file contents.

          2. Ucalegon

            Re: Windows Search

            The students in my secondary school are shown how to search on Windows 10 like this:

            "Windows key, start typing the application you wish to launch..."

            "Nothing coming up on the screen? Ok, click on the desktop"

            "Windows key, start typing the application name you wish to launch..."

            "Didn't find the application known to be installed?"

            "Okay, click on the applications icon, then on settings, then back on applications again"

            "There ya go. Easy."

            In fairness, it has meant not needing to prepare a starter activity for any of my lessons this year. Thank you Microsoft.

      3. bombastic bob Silver badge
        Meh

        Re: Windows Search

        to HELL with the micro-shaft 'search the universe' indexer anyway. DISABLE THE DAMN THING!

        I find that searches are FASTER using grep on POSIX machines. There are no inefficient Micro-shaft "lack of cache" issues on Linux or FreeBSD!

        I mean how often do I need to search EVERY EXECUTABLE BINARY for the text "Hi Mom!" - or an SQL database, for that matter.

        a) run cygwin

        b) use find 'whatever' | grep "whatever" instead.

        much better. eliminate searching files that you know are NOT the ones you want. Faster, better, doesn't give Micro-shaft an excuse to slurp your file system for whatever they want to look for and report it back to Redmond...

        Besides, Cortana ALWAYS 'hits the web' with whatever you're looking for. the cygwin method does *NOT*

    2. Fred Dibnah

      Re: Windows Search

      It’s telling that the shortcut Win-f opens Search now, when originally it opened Find. That’s progress for you.

      1. onefang
        Joke

        Re: Windows Search

        "It’s telling that the shortcut Win-f opens Search now, when originally it opened Find."

        That's two more letters, so that now Microsoft can keep it's reputation for bloat.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Upgrade

    > or, heck, just uninstall the OS and have done with.

    Back in the day people said "the software required Windows 95 or better, so I installed Linux".

    1. Ucalegon

      Re: Upgrade

      "the software required Windows 95 or better, so I installed Linux"

      Still unsure how Windows 10 > Windows 95 (coat etc)

      1. bombastic bob Silver badge
        Devil

        Re: Upgrade

        '95 ran more efficiently than Win-10-nic, and didn't slurp nor advertise to you.

        And it was RESPECTABLE in its appearance, a nice 3D skeuomorphic appearance without being excessive about 3D-ness [some people thought XP was 'bulbous', but I'd rather have 'bulbous' than FLATSO]. XP could still have the '95-ish look (mostly) with the 'windows 2000' option for the start menu.

  3. onefang

    "over 50 per cent of commercial devices were now on Windows 10."

    Not sure exactly what they mean by "commercial devices". The photocopier? The coffee machine in the office kitchen? 50 per cent of the staplers? Are computers that dual boot Linux / Windows 10 counted as 50 per cent on Windows 10, or only if booted into Windows 50 per cent of the time? Perhaps 50 per cent of computers in the office that sneakily upgraded themselves to Windows 10 before we could stop them all?

    1. LeahroyNake

      Windows copier ?

      Not seen one of those to be honest ;) most of them run very custom versions BSD or Linux from my experience.

      Anyway the stapler just got an update and is attacking the spider plant across the office... I'm heading to the pub before it turns its atte.vcgh c v h v th th in

      1. Danny 14

        Re: Windows copier ?

        i still see loads of shop machines sporting the XP lock screen. Sure its not the XP desktop but still, no hurry for 10. The only reason we went to 10 is that we had hardware that didnt support 7, we cant have a mix of OS so we moved to 1607. It was hell at first but we got things ironed out with 1709 - no provisioned apps, start menu that resembles 7 as much as possible. GPO locking down as much crap as possible, chrome (not edge) with legacy support for IE sites that dont like chrome (we use a silverlight library app).

        shouldnt need to jump through those hoops but 10 is a fucking wreck out of the box.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Windows copier ?

        A friend of mine used to work in a building which was highly Microsoft'ed... Including the lift.

        The tales of woo about that building were a source of much amusement. She wasn't hugely amused though, she was sensible enough not to use the lift, but unfortunately worked quite a few floors up.

    2. Zakhar

      "Are computers that dual boot Linux / Windows 10 counted as 50 per cent on Windows 10, or only if booted into Windows 50 per cent of the time?"

      Since you have paid for it when you bought your PC, thanks to Redmond's racketeering policy, it is counted as Windows even if the first thing you do is wipe it out to install your favourite Linux distro.

      There are very few hardware vendors that will respect the EU law in this case and propose a meagre refund, but since this is a "manual process", I bet it is still counted as Windows.

  4. Fading
    Childcatcher

    In the good old days....

    We didn't need to search as we had saved everything with logical names in logical places..... Or in the good old old old days the only searching we had to do was using the tape counter and ff and rw buttons.....

    Do remember shutting down the search indexer in Vista though - damn thing would hammer resources at the most inopportune moments...

    1. onefang

      Re: In the good old days....

      Or in the good old old old old old old days, the only searching was for that punched card that slipped out under the door when you dropped a deck.

    2. Adrian 4

      Re: In the good old days....

      I think the peachiest inopportune moments are now reserved for windows update. Search has to make do with less inopportune moments so they can afford to search more directories.

    3. Chris Evans

      Re: In the good old days....

      I don't understand, surely it only needs to scan the whole disc once to create a database. Then it would update it as files are added, removed or moved. The initial scan could take quite a while but the updating should be hardly noticeable.

      I must be missing something!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: In the good old days....

        "surely it only needs to scan the whole disc once to create a database." - we have a name for that. We call it a file system.

        1. Danny 14

          Re: In the good old days....

          if only the file system knew a list of all the files it has stored....

          1. Chris Evans

            Re: In the good old days....

            "if only the file system knew a list of all the files it has stored...."

            But a database could massively speed up finding a file that I can't remember where it is.

            I just did a test on an SSD drive with only 167GB of data on it, it tool over 2 minutes to search for a file.

            I hope a database would be two orders of magnitude quicker.

            1. Chris Evans

              Re: In the good old days....

              I've got a down vote which presumably means I've got something wrong, please enlighten me.

    4. JohnFen

      Re: In the good old days....

      "We didn't need to search as we had saved everything with logical names in logical places"

      Which is why grep was never written.

    5. DropBear

      Re: In the good old days....

      "We didn't need to search"

      That would have been before a single application could routinely install anywhere between ten and a hundred thousand files (yes, really) - except we did need to search to find our shit even back then. And that's from someone* who still ignores that "my documents" exists and still keeps partitioning his drive based on specific categories of things to store, from all the way back when having a smaller sector size actually made a difference...

      * I can neither confirm or deny baseless allegations regarding the existence of folders like "E:\Temp\tmp3\stuff\legacy\olddrive\unpack\test" on said disk and anyway you can't prove it!

    6. phuzz Silver badge

      Re: In the good old days....

      I still keep my files in a somewhat logical layout so I can usually easily find the things I want.

      Otherwise there's always good old dir -s

  5. WibbleMe

    Im not quite sure how things wire up but it it was gzip that was barked it may have actually broken the internet

  6. JohnFen

    If we're talking about search

    "You really want a shiny new Windows Search"

    In the realm of search, I'd just be happy if the one in Windows 10 actually worked right. As it is, it's so bad that I can't use it at all and use third party search applications instead. Much like what I'm doing with zip files now.

    1. Glen 1

      Re: If we're talking about search

      My main issue with it is inconsistency. Type something, delete it, type it again. You often get a different set of results. How the hell is that considered shippable?

      1. Tom 38

        Re: If we're talking about search

        Type something, delete it, type it again. You often get a different set of results. How the hell is that considered shippable?

        Ah, the joys of MLT systems (More Like This). You didn't like the search results it gave you last time obvs, so here are some different ones!

        1. Glen 1

          Re: If we're talking about search

          >didn't like the last ones

          Ah, but I *did* like the first ones.

          'show network interfaces'

          Type the same thing next time I need them.... Bing search.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: If we're talking about search

        I believe these are called "alternative facts".

    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge
      Linux

      Re: If we're talking about search

      Another bullet dodged.

  7. Updraft102

    "The most notable feature in the new version is an improved Windows Search which, in shades of search engines of old, spends a while indexing every folder and file on the PC in what Microsoft claims is a “one-off” process."

    Can the user specify to not have their search terms sent to Bing as well?

    When I used Windows, I used Everything for search. It's a high bar to reach, and even if MS reaches it, they'd just be reinventing the wheel.

    1. I can't believe its not butter

      Everything Search

      +1 for Voidtools Everything. That should be standard out of the box.

      1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

        Re: Everything Search

        It will only be standard if a few things happen

        1) MS Buy the thing

        2) And they don't crap all over it and make a mere shadow of what it did before.

        And the chances of that happening is less than me winning the EuroMillions lottery tonight and as I don't play it, the anwser is obvious.

    2. Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge
      Thumb Up

      Installed Everything on our document server - and it helped a lot, especially when somebody was looking for a certain document, but was not sure where to find it. Big thumbsup for that software.

  8. a_yank_lurker

    Clueless in Redmond

    If there is a serious bug, fix it toot suit even it means a feature upgrade gets pushed back. Users have lived without the new feature so an extra couple of weeks or months wont be a big issue. A serious bug is a major issue.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Clueless in Redmond

      > fix it toot suit

      I think you'll find it's called a "zoot suit".

      1. RobThBay

        Re: Clueless in Redmond

        Nah... it's "toute suite". Get something done right away.

        https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/tout+suite

        1. Anonymous Coward
  9. Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

    ZipGenius or 7-zip works better.

    Microsoft is on a slippery downhill.

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