Indexing issue

Win10 Pro 22H2 build 19045.3930

I generally use UltraSearch when searching for files, but I've noticed lately that something I've done has rendered the search tool useless.

Generally I only use Windows search when I want quick access to programs and features because it's usually a lot faster than clicking through menus and my desktop has enough on it. So if I wanted control panel, click and "con" has it right there in front of me. Or msconfig, or regedit, basically anything I don't need sitting on my desktop.

That no longer works. Instead I can get, oh, let's say "terminal" out and there will be links to how to access Terminal. I can wait some time for it and sometimes it just won't show up. Other times it may take 30=45 seconds.

I'm not sure exactly when this began. It's been a while and it's finally annoying me enough to take the time to sort it out.
But I can't quite figure out why this is. Indexing is ON. Alll the drive areas with installed software are selected to be indexed. I've rebuilt the database twice now. It's like it's not there.

I',ve been thinking that with the SSD/processor combination I have, it would make sense to just turn it off. Especially because I use UltraSearch for actual searches. It's only this specific functionality and photo searches that I leave it on for because UltraSearch at the moment doesn't provide thumnails (although the next release will!)

I'm just a bit baffled by this. I've run alll the normal stuff except for a restore but I think this started before the last overwrite so that may not fix it anyways. I've even verified that the folder and file properties are set properly for indexing. I've run multiple chkdsk and DISM .....restorehealth and it all comes up clean.

Anyone have any other deas? It's like the system is intentionally choosing to ignore the files which is just bizarre. I can only assume that I'm overlooking something that should be obvious.

I think since it's nbaffling me I may just disable it entirely. It seems to me that even without indexing it would be faster than what I'm dealing with right now. If anyone here has run into this before and figured it out, I'd appreciate the pointer.

OK. Wow! I'm used to responding with such thoroughn answers to questions but I rarely find myself on the asking side and wasn't clear with the issue described. I've never received such a thorough response before on anything in the what? 30 years since Win 3.1? lol It's a shame that I wasn't more clear with my question. I think I''m going to like this place. lol

It's funny that I use Explorer and UltraSearch almost precisely in an opposing manner to the way that you do.
So year, there are essentially three places where I search an all three are used in fairly specific ways.

Explorer is used primarily for images, video, and of course getting real work done. Finding things within the tree structure that I'm working within on any project. Usually I'm somewhat making attempts at being organized. So in those cases I'm browsing images for a website for example and there's no need to locate some random file. So if I type *.exe, search in explorer works perfectly fine.

When I need to grab a file that I know I have but I'm unsure of where it is in the directory structure or if I need to look for content within files I'll use Ultrasearch.

It's the search on the taskbar that has me puzzled. That gets used almost exclusively for machine management tasks. I can usually do as you did above. Control Panel would show up by the time I get the letters "cont" typed and I can just click it. Same for Msconfig, disk management, temp files, etc. I disabled the indexing and now it's working again but just a tad slower. But what was happening is that I could type out "msconfig" and I would get web links to info on how to use it but it would be several minutes before I would even see msconfig appear to click on it if it bothered showing up at all.
This is despite numerous things that should have corrected it. I even made sure that the files themselves weren't listed as hidden or anything like that.
So right now for example, if I open explorer right now and go to C:\Windows and type msconfig, I get just two results. Two files called MigLog.xml. Ultrasearch returns 24 files, two of which are msconfig.exe., one in the System32 folder and another in WinSxs folder. It takes about two minutes to complete the search but never finds it.

Now if in Explorer I go into the System32 folder and type msconfig in the search box, it does pull it up after about 12 seconds in the 20 seconds it takes to search the one folder.

The MigLog.xml folders were 4 layers deep. So it's not that it's only searching directly within it's own folder. But it appears to be ignoring the System32 folder unless I'm actually IN the System32 folder even though the permissions show "Allow files within this folder to have their contents indexed in addition to properties" IS checked. And..... wait a minute....
This doesn't look right....

OK. So System32 permissions seem to have become confused... At least I think so. Here's what I see...

I'm both Admin and user on my machine and I have both a business and personal MS Office acccount.

Logged in as admin, viewing the permissions of the System32 folder, I only have "special permissions". My standard user account has Read & Execute, List Folder Contents, and Read.

This is getting a bit over my head as this setup with admin and two office accounts where one is a user and one is admin but both are linked so I can access everything from the one account is fairly new to me. But it seems that as admin I should at least have the same access as a default user. I wonder if this is the source of the problem. I can run regedit and make edits following a UAC prompt and regedit is located within that folder. I can use explorer and go to the file and the properties of the file show Trusted Installer as having full access while system, users, and administrators have Read, & Read and Execute permissions.

Perhaps it's as simple as giving admin Read, + Read and Execute permissions on the System32 folder? Maybe search is seeing the folder permissions there while navigation lets me get to it and once in, it's no longer a barrier?

OK. Went to go make that change to the System32 folder. My admin account is listed TWICE, once with full control and once with only "special permissions". This doesn't show twice under properties or the security tab, or even when clicking on EDIT . it only shows up when I go to the Advanced tab. It appears that since the entry that didn't have access was above the second entry with the read and Read&Execute permissions, I couldn't change anything on the admin user account on the folder despite being admin. I tried the "Use effective access" which i didn't think would help and I was right.

So I backed out to Terminal logged in as admin and issued a command to give my admin account full permissions on the folder which it did without a fuss. Then I navigated back to the folder and I show as having full permissions on the system32 folder AND the second admin account showing up has vanished.

So I went back to Explorer and typed msconfig and BAM, there it was at the top of the search. I went over to the taskbar search and repeated... BAM....


So now I just need to put the permissions as they belong. I'm not comfortable with full access on the system folder. But I can look the defaults up and put it all back as it should be. Thanks for the guidance!

Well, I hadn't wanted to deal with a permissions issue and I don't know what caused it, but from what I could tell, search wasn't being permitted to search the folder although it was configured to do so. As I said, I use that to access things like msconfig easily but search wouldn't find it unless I began a search in file explorer from the system32 folder. Seems OK now. Thanks for the permissions screencaps. Those are incredibly useful. I marked this to reference if needed in the future. Should be a sticky. lol