Indexing - Windows 8.1

Clanger

Moderator
Staff member
I want to disable "Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties for any drive".
Capture.PNG

Even if i disable
net stop WSearch
net stop WSearchIdxPi
sc config WSearch start=disabled
sc config WSearchIdxPi start=disabled
when i untick it it still goes through the usual routine.
Is there a setting i have missed and is there a master setting in the registry somewhere?

If i go through and disable all the options on a running system that i then capture will the os save those settings or will i have to redo them each time the captured image is deployed?

Ive tried to harvest the tweak using RegFromApp but i dont know what process is being used to run the drive properties window. Ive tried searching online too but nada :(.
 
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I want to disable "Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties for any drive".

when i untick it it still goes through the usual routine.
How did you notice about it?

Have you check into drivers?
 
With nLite there is a tweak to disable indexing so when you ran the custom disc it created all you had todo is untick the box and that was that, now it goes through the whole undexing routine even though i disabled the 2 services so i must have missed something. Most stuff im reading is jusr disable wsearch and disabling indexing from Indexing Options in control panel. Ive seen a couple of things in Ten Forums which i havnt seen before so i will try them out.

Search is needed by Comodo etc so i dont want to remove it and i think they need to be running to install (my beloved)Nero8 because of the poxy NM indexing. I found WSearchIdxPi by fiddling around but i havnt seen any topic anywhere about it. Drivers? It has its own driver?
Disabling both services makes a noticable impact on ram usage.

There are some settings in group policy but if a tweak goes to hkcu it doesnt always work if i change it from
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Group Policy Objects\{A0980E62-9215-420A-856F-5D22F891F74A}User\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows to
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\

and im not up on transfering group policy tweaks between machines yet unless they are
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\ or HKLMSoftware\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\ tweaks.
 
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Search is needed by Comodo etc so i dont want to remove it and i think they need to be running to install (my beloved)Nero8 because of the poxy NM indexing. I found WSearchIdxPi by fiddling around but i havnt seen any topic anywhere about it. Drivers? It has its own driver?

It's a critical driver, you could get the (boot) 0x7b error if you have disable/remove it, also is needed for antivirus or another file scanning software.
 
Ive been disabling both for a while now and im not having any problems but if that one is a driver then that maybe the yellow bang im getting in device manager. Gonna put this one on the back burner for a few weeks, its a distraction.
 
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The driver and service are "FileInfo", not Windows desktop search or Windows (shell) search related but explorer scanning.


With nLite there is a tweak to disable indexing so when you ran the custom disc it created all you had todo is untick the box and that was that, now it goes through the whole undexing routine even though i disabled the 2 services so i must have missed something.

If it asks to set to all files and folders, all what it does is to change the file indexing attributes.
 
It is probably an NTFS thing, built in to the file system/driver. For example, I'm fairly sure that you can't index a drive formatted in FAT.

IIRC, when this index is enabled, it's putting information in the MFST. (Or something like that.)
 
It is probably an NTFS thing, built in to the file system/driver. For example, I'm fairly sure that you can't index a drive formatted in FAT.
A Fat limitation as exFAT symlink/hardlink limitation perhaps?


I just installed Win 7 and took 5.52 GB, a couple of minutes liter, it took some more up to 5.56 GB.
WDSearch is disabled
Didn't checked if it was autosaving a restore point.
 
I did a quick test. I created a new drive in a Win8.1 VM, I formatted it FAT32. No option about indexing in the Properties box. (So Clanger could run FAT32 if she doesn't want to deal with that index option thing.)

IMG_4672.JPG

Here's an article from Microsoft that talks about how indexing is a feature of the NTFS. My guess is that unchecking the box "Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed" turns off an attribute (or something similar) in the NTFS on the drive itself, so that the Windows Indexer - if it were running - can't read the index for that drive.

My hypothesis/theory would also explain why it's a drive by drive setting. And why, when you add a new drive to Windows, the option to allow the index to be seen is enabled for that drive, even when it's disabled for all other drives. And even when Windows Search has been removed, disabled, etc.

Having said that, it's not clear to me how NTFS is able to index the "contents" of files. Wouldn't it (or even Windows) have to know how to read file types for context indexing to work? (For example, would have to know how to parse .pdf's, old WP DOS .wpd's, etc.)
 
Having said that, it's not clear to me how NTFS is able to index the "contents" of files. Wouldn't it (or even Windows) have to know how to read file types for context indexing to work? (For example, would have to know how to parse .pdf's, old WP DOS .wpd's, etc.)

4 GB file limitation on FAT32

FileInfo is a driver (name suggest somoething) depending in FilterMgr driver.
 
Trouble is the 8.1 setup doesnt allow me to choose fat32 file system. If you want to format fat32 then you gotta do it by other means but the 8.1 setup creates a small partition for the boot files but if you format by other means then 8.1 setup will install the boot files on the fat32 partition which aint a biggy i suppose if you use an ssd but not with a good old spinner. Indexing isnt my biggests gripe and im struggling to catch up with my toodoo list anyway. :(
 
I didn't know that, but from my previous issue with a reparse pointer, it makes sense that NTLite is tied to NTFS.

I didn't expect you to switch to FAT32. (I had forgotten about the 4 GB limitation. I thought I would never hit that limit and tried a FAT32 formatted partition a while ago and then had to reformat back to NTFS when I got an error message that a file was too big.)
 
That will be a problem with video files. Audio wont be with a 1 hour cd at 700mb max. Its worth knowing though.
 
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