Introduction
The search utility that comes with the Windows operating system works but we're sure you have noticed that it is slow. You may have also noticed that in Windows XP the perfectly functional search utility was replaced with a dog "search companion" (havent Microsoft learnt anything from "clippy" the much hated office assistant) plus a menu system that leaves the even the most computer literate confused.
For us at Nexus Concepts this was the last straw - we decided to write our own search utility and it just so happened that it ran hundreds of times faster and after the first search is even faster still (search a hundred thousand files in a second or two), the good old fashioned search screen was restored (with an XP flavour) and we made sure that searches didnt take 100% of the CPU time.
I certainly hope that you can notice the improvement immediately when you run XP search. If you have any suggestions or comments please post them to the forums.
Basic Searching
Searching is simple, just start XP search, enter the filename you are looking for and press ENTER. The list of matching files will appear. Of course you may want to look on a different hard drive, a network location etc so you can also click on the button below "Look In" to choose a different location to search.
You may double click a file in the file list to open it, press DEL on the keyboard to delete the file or use windows explorer to view its location by right clicking on it and choosing "Explore".
Advanced Searching
XP Search also has an "Advanced Options" group which allows you to filter the list of files further. Simply click the checkbox "Size" or "Modified Between" to activate that filter and enter or select the options. Click on Search to start the search for files.
Using the File List
The list of files returned by a search can be sorted by click on the column header. For example click on the "Size" column header to sort by the file size - click it again to sort in reverse order.
Files can be opened by selecting the file and pressing ENTER or by double clicking. Files can be sent to the recycle bin by pressing DEL on the keyboard or to delete permanently use SHIFT and DEL together. To open windows explorer at the location of the file right click on the file and choose "Explore" from the popup menu.