AutoIt Search Engine Help

What it does:

    This program is a fully operational self-contained search engine.  You use it to search for strings in file names on your computer.  It basically does the same thing as the Windows Explorer Search Companion, but better.  This program creates indexes of all the files on your hard drive.  These indexes are then scanned when you search for files on your computer.  As a result, the search is much faster than that of the Explorer Search Companion.  So basically this program searches for files on your computer, but does it much faster than what you would normally use.

How to use it:

Indexing:

To start using it, simply click the "Rebuild Index" button on the GUI when you run the program.  This will initiate the indexing engine.  It will then create an index of all files on all drives (or that drive that you selected if you didn't leave the default "All Drives" value in the drop down box selected).  The recent engine improvements allow the program to index an average drive in about 3 to 10 minutes (results vary due to the number of files on a user's computer).  You may cancel the indexing process at any time by selecting the Indexing window and pressing the Escape key.  A confirmation box will appear asking you if you are sure you want to cancel the index.  If you cancel you will unfortunately delete all progress the computer has made for the current drive.

    Once the index has been created, you will want to update it routinely, maybe once a week, or once a month depending on how often you move stuff around and create new files.   Once an index has been created, you may also start searching for files.  You can search for a file by typing in a piece of the filename into the search input control. 

You can select what drive to search if you have multiple hard drives.  Simply use the combo box provided and select the drive you wish to search.

Please keep in mind that all the search results are also stored in a text file in the same directory as the .exe.  The text file is called "results.txt".

Searching:

    To search, enter your query without quotes in the box.  The search string is automatically treated like there are quotes around it.  For example if you press the spacebar and then type the search query it will search for files with a space in their filename before the search query.  As it is searching you may cancel at any time by pressing the stop button or by pressing the Esc key.  When doing so you will not remove the search window.  The search will simply stop searching and all search results that have been retrieved will be left in the search list.  You can then view them from there.  This newer version allows full user interactivity even while it is still searching.   In addition please keep in mind that you may click the column titles like "filename" to sort the list. The sort functions are currently a bit buggy and may not return what you expect in the order you expect it would (file size, date modified, date created)  Once you find the file you are looking for, simply double click it and explorer will open up and select the file.  You may also open a file or group of files by selecting the file or files you want to open and then by pressing the Open button.

Limitations:

    The current program is limited to about 4,000 search results.  That means that it can successfully display about 4,000 and any more aren't displayed though they are written to the results.txt file.  The reason for this is because of the limitations in the autoit GUI that only allow a little over 4000 controls per window.  If you need to search for something that has more than that many results you are better off using explorer because you doing a fairly general search which is slow anyway.

    Current files and directories that have non-standard characters in their names aren't supported (ex: ë). They will be indexed and will appear as a result, however, the characters in their name that are non-standard characters will not be displayed correctly and you will therefore not be able to double click the file or press the open button to view or open the file.  You will have to manually go to the file's location and open it with explorer.

    The current version requires an index for each drive.  If a user uses multiple operating systems and the drives have different letter names on each operating system the indexes will have to be rebuilt separately for each operating system.