Windows Search in Windows 8 not working

[Aila]

I am using a Windows 8 desktop with two hard drives (Primary and Secondary). On my primary hard drive Windows and all other application are installed. While on the second hard drive i store all my important files, data, music, pictures, videos, etccc. Now the problem i am facing is whenever i use Windows search to find out any file from my secondary hard drive, it just wont work.

No matter i use the Win+W (Windows Search) or the Windows Explorer search, it wont come up with any result even after typing the exact name of the folder. Did anyone else faced this problem? Is there anything like Win 8 wont search the secondary hard drives?

Please help.

[Sindu]

Before i can suggest anything i have a small question. Did the search ever worked for the second hard drive or it stopped working recently?

• Meanwhile i will suggest you to try troubleshooting the search windows search. For doing the same, follow these steps:
• Open Windows Explorer, click Control Panel from the Ribbon.
• Click All Control Panel Items
• Click Troubleshooting
• Click System and Security
• Click "Search and Indexing"

Thats it. See if it makes any difference.

[Aila]

I appreciated your help dude, but I have already tried that and it doesn’t fixes or help me in any way. I even tried using the Microsoft Fixit for Windows Desktop Search but that doesn’t helps either.

What now?

[Daniela007]

Probably there would be any damaged components that is creating the problem. Hence I will suggest you to better try fixing those running this small command:
dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth

Secondly, I would suggest you make sure that your secondary Hard Drive is indexed for the search or it will not work.

[Michael Sabin]

Yeah, that is the reason why windows search is not able to result the files from the secondary drive. Whenever you search a new place or new drive, you must always first index the same to the search index . You can do it easily by going to the folder or the drive you want to index. In your case your drive would be having drive letter. Open that drive, and click on the Include in library toolbar button, and click on an available library to include the folder in. That’s it. Now try searching for the files and folders. It should work fine.

[Aila]

Yeah, that is the reason why windows search is not able to result the files from the secondary drive. Whenever you search a new place or new drive, you must always first index the same to the search index . You can do it easily by going to the folder or the drive you want to index. In your case your drive would be having drive letter. Open that drive, and click on the Include in library toolbar button, and click on an available library to include the folder in. That’s it. Now try searching for the files and folders. It should work fine.

Ok, so this was it. My secondary hard drive was not indexed and hence it was not working. Thank you very much for the help Michael. That really helped me out.