Program files (.exe) not found by Windows Search

dalchina said:

Hi, Cortana search (including 'Find results in apps/documents/photos/') - whatever happened to 'My Stuff' - doesn't find et.exe at all- 'cos it's not indexed- which is why I gave up on using that long ago. And I hesitated over 'apps' - which apps? Terminology.

Cortana search relies on what's indexed as far as what's on disk is concerned, so is inherently limited ('useless' to me). I guess that's the difference you're seeing.

Nope - indexing is not the cause here. You are correct if it wasn't indexed it wouldn't find it but in this case it is indexed. Indeed by default the whole of C:\Users is indexed except for %appdata%.

If you look at the picture in the post #29 above it finds everything except .exe and (except for the shortcut) everything is in the same directory so clearly that directory is indexed. This means .exe are either deliberately excluded or it is a bug.

I know there are other solutions but I liked to just press and type to search...

I think this is intentional, otherwise all kinds of random.exe would show up when typing something into the search, such as command line programs and what not.

I believe the intention is that if you're going to search, you would use File Explorer to do so. At least that's my guess.

This search for exe works now on 1709 version.