Vista & indexing network drives

According to Vista's help system in the final release, Vista does not index
the contents of network shares. It also doesn't appear to ask for help from
Windows Server 2003 indexing service, when those files are indexed on the
server. I have not been able to discover a way to do a fast search through
the full content of files in a folder on a server.

Is this really true? If so, this is a huge disappointment and a big step
backwards from Windows XP with Windows Desktop Search. I have many clients
running Small Business Server, with a central repository of company files,
and My Document folders redirected onto the server. Vista will index offline
files, I assume, but I can't run Company folders in offline mode on every
workstation. These are small businesses that shouldn't have to buy third
party search appliances.

I have to be missing something. How can I index the contents of network
folders in Vista?

I've been trying to find information online. As near as I can tell, indexing
network shares was removed from Vista at some point during the beta/RC cycle.
One comment by a developer suggests that the reason is that it doesn't scale
well for hundreds of users to be reaching into the same folders continuously.

That may be true, but I work with businesses that have 15-20 users who
immediately realized the power of finding company documents instantly with
Windows Desktop Search. This single omission will cause them to postpone or
avoid Vista.

It makes me wonder if Microsoft's promotional language is out of date. For
example, on the Vista web site: "Windows Vista helps organizations
effectively manage complex data collections and provides new search
capabilities so that users can quickly find almost anything on their computer
_or company servers_."
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvist...s/finduse.mspx

That isn't really true, is it?

Arrggh!

I agree. This was a huge letdown for me and my company. 20 users on 1
server, 8 on the second. It would have been great to have the network
drives indexed. As it is, it's still a nice search feature, but if the
network drives could be indexed....WOW it would have been nice.

It's taken me a while to put it all together. Vista can read the indexes
maintained by another Vista computer, and - more importantly - it will be
able to read the indexes maintained by a Longhorn server.

But I work with small businesses, and they're not going to be running a
Longhorn server for a long time - probably not until they upgrade to a
Longhorn-based Small Business Server, which is at least 18-24 months away.

I'm going to have trouble making the case for Vista in small businesses, I'm
afraid.


"Joe Zapert" wrote:

> Perhaps we'll see this out-of-band when Longhorn server arrives?
> Ah, another Vista disappointment!
>

Today Microsoft released an update to its UNC addin for Windows Desktop
Search that supports Vista, so Vista can index network shares exactly the
same way XP does.

Here's the KB article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/918996

And here's the download page:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

[siegeld]

By any chance, is this failing on a Vista x64 machine and working on a Vista X86 machine? I too have installed the UNC search add-in (on a x64 machine) and the service starts and silently stops. I also don't see any network shares in the Index Options control panel.

[siegeld]

The issue must be with the x64 version of Vista, as far as I can tell. Does anyone have this working with x64?

Here it is 8 months later.

Does anyone have a fix to get indexing working on x64 Vista as yet.


--
cherokee
Posted via http://www.vistaheads.com

On Thu, 4 Sep 2008 09:41:19 +0100, cherokee
<cherokee.3f7goc@no-mx.forums.vistaheads.com> wrote:

>
>Here it is 8 months later.

You can't count very well.

That's standard for a Vistahead, though.

Ah, I have been caught out by that stupid American date format.

The important facts are still the same.


--
cherokee
Posted via http://www.vistaheads.com