Windows 7’s Search Box in the Start Menu was originally introduced in Windows Vista. It finally made searching any documents or application available through Start Menu. But if you have ever tried to use the search box to find anything, you will soon realize the results are not instantly returned. Often time, it’s slow and return unwanted results. The whole searching process from the start menu will getting slower, really slow when your documents grow. We’ve already covered few ways you can clean your hard drive space, but it will not help to speed up the search.
Make Search Faster By Only Search Applications
First useful tip is useful if you only want to use the search box as a quick application launcher.
To do this, we can modify the search to only looking for applications.
Right Click on the Taskbar > Properties
Under the “Start Menu” tab click on “Customize …”
Scroll down the list find the section on “Search other files and Libraries” choose “Don’t search”. Hit OK when you done.
Modify Search Index By Constrain Search Location and Rebuild Search Index
By default, Windows will looking for files under certain folders in your User profile, and applications under Program Files. If you have a large amount of file that you don’t necessary want the search to index those files you can modify the index location of all the files you want Windows Search to Index.
Go to Start Menu type “Index Option”
Click on Indexing Options,
Now you can Modify all the Included index locations from here. Once you’ve finish modifying it’s a good idea to go to “Advanced” and Rebuild the index all over again. This way it will guarantee your search result to be fresh and the index is optimal.
To Rebuild just click on the “Rebuild” button. It will take a while for Windows Index to complete the whole process and until then try to search files or application again from your start menu, hopefully those tips and tricks have speeded up your search experience.