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Alan SilvermanFlag for United States of America

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Windows Search replacement under Win8.1 using Classic Shell

I have a client with a new Lenovo I5 running Windows 8.1.  When she tries to search in her documents it always says “no document found”.  Even though she can see the document she’s searching for. We’ve indexed and reindexed and researched on many sites where other people are having this same problem.  There are solutions but none have worked for us.  Does anyone know of a program that can replace the Windows search function in Windows 8.1?  I've installed Classic Shell so it must work with that.
Thanks,
Alan
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McKnife
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Please provide details.
1 What is the exact search term?
2 Is the term contained inside the title or content?
3 what type of document is it (filetype)?
4 is this (3) filetype content-indexed (see indexing options)?
What is she using to search with?

I use Windows Explorer, navigate to near enough where I should be and search from the Windows Search function (top right of explorer). Works great and finds documents.

I use the Windows Search Function and I have Users in my Location setup for Windows Search. Make sure her locations are good and then re-index.

It works great. I only use the desktop and I have Windows 8.1 Pro running.
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Here is what I think may have happened.  When I set this computer up I set up two drives, a primary drive and a backup drive.  I cloned the primary to the backup drive so if the primary died or got screwed up, you could still boot off the backup.  So both the primary and the backup are operating system drives and have the same volume labels.  

In indexing options in the control panel I try to specify that only drive C is indexed.  But drive C shows up as E for indexing purposes..

Here are some screenshots showing this.   User generated imageUser generated imageUser generated imageIn control panel when I specify Disk E to be indexed, below that it shows that Disk E is the indexed location.
When I change it to specify Disk C, it still shows E as being indexed.  

 It might be because both drives have the same label.  What if I changed the label on the secondary drive?
Either change the drive or else change the indexing location to allow both drives. But that is why it is not indexing.
When I try to change the indexing location to allow the C drive it doesn't do it.  That's what the screenshots show above. In the second screenshot I've checked the C drive in the part that says "change selected location".  In that screen shot in the summary of selected locations it shows that only that the E drive is selected, not C.  Likewise if I choose both the C and E drives it only shows that the E drive is selected.  Somewhere Windows Indexing is confused as to which drive is which.
For your information: as long as you don't use that second drive to further constantly synchronize data, you should remove its drive letter in disk management and the problem should vanish after reindexing.
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John
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McKnife, the primary function of the drive is for automatic backups.  If I remove the drive letter would I still be able to access it for that purpose?  
It's not a raid drive, it's merely a secondary drive where I put the backups.

John Hurst, how do I do that?   Do I just delete the operating system off that drive? Can I just change the drive label?  But why does the operating system on C, which it's booting to, why does that think that E is C?  It's not like there aren't other dual boot systems where you have different drives in the same tower with different operating systems on them?  Somewhere in the operating system on drive C there's a pointer to the second drive.  When I tell it to index drive C, it should only index drive C and it should know which drive is C and which drive is E.

But that doesn't matter so much. This doesn't happen in Windows 7 but I can't fix Windows 8.   I just want to resolve the situation as quickly as possible without causing more problems.   That's why I was even wondering if there's a desktop search mechanism out there that might even be better than Windows search.  Before Windows Search on XP I used Google Desktop search.

Thanks,
Alan
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What I would do if I were you: don't keep a secondary drive fed with a static clone. Rather you should image your drive from time to time using a schedule and the built-in imaging solution. That way, all data is backed up and no such intereferencve with indexing will be seen.

I use Acronis 2014 to create ongoing full image monthly and daily document backups for all my clients.  Cloning the primary to the backup was just an afterthought.

Changing the label didn't work.  Now I'll just wipe the operating system off the secondary drive.  My guess is that won't work either.  I'm still wondering if there's another Desktop search that's as good or better than Microsofts that I could just substitute until that day in the future when they get around to fixing this bug.  

Thanks,
Alan
Spoke with the client.  If wiping the operating system out of the second drive doesn't work we're going to use X1 Professional Client.  It costs $50 (minus a 15% off coupon) and from all reports it's superior to Windows Search.  Time is the important element and I don't have the time to debug Windows 8 and the client doesn't have the money to pay me to do it.
Thanks for your help,
Alan
Alan - Thanks for the update and I was happy to assist to the extent I could.
Wiping out the op system files on the backup hard drive worked.  The search function works now. Not perfectly but the client says she can live with it.  Actually I thought the X1 Professional Client seemed like a good solution.  It gets excellent reviews and considering all the time put it, it would have been easy to just go to that if we had known about it.  But then when you start diagnosing a problem you never know how long it's going to take.
Thanks again,
Al