On Wed, 21 Oct 2009 05:14:34 -0500, SAnton
wrote:
Imagine the folowing situation: I downloaded .zip-archive with thouzands
of .php-files. I unpacked the file to the folder at my Desktop (which is
indexed by default). I want to find all files containing string «Test».
So, I added «Plain text filter» to the .php files extension in the
indexing settings. Should I wait hours until the indexing will be done?
Or I can just search (more slowly)? I tryed and did not get any results!
So, I will wait. It's very annoying!
Another case: I want to find files containing Russian word
«Привет». The problem is that that
word can be encoded by different bytes depending on codepage (most
popular are cp1251, UTF-8, KOI8-R). I tested text search and found that
if BOM present at the start of the file, file considered UTF-8,
otherwise file considered cp1251. But how about UTF-8 files which do not
have BOM mark at the beginning? When I program PHP I always remove BOM,
because othervise these BOMs are sended to the user-agent by server.
Notepad application still detects UTF-8 in such files, but Search is not
(see attached files). Also, how about KOI8? I didn't find any way to
specify encoding in search options.
Third case: how about different word forms in Russian? «One day» =
«Один день», «Three
days» = «Три дня», «Five days» =
«Пять дней», «All these
days» = «Все эти
дни»,... How I will find
«день» («day») with all possible forms?
It's a pity that Windows text search is completely useless. 
So, you find a few unusual situations that don't work as you would like
and you then conclude that Search is useless? That is laughable. I've
been using Windows Search on Vista for over two years, and overall it
works extremely well, once I learned how to use it.
Incidentally, the Desktop folder is *not* indexed by default. Try moving
your files to your Documents folder.
This forum is actually on Usenet, not on the "parasitic" Web forum that
you posted from. As a result, the HTML character entity references in
your examples are not decoded for most readers. It's unlikely that
English-speaking users are going to be able to help you anyway, since your
problems involve searching for Russian words. I suggest that you look for
a support forum for Russian-speaking users of Vista.
Doug M. in NJ