Mysteriously appearing search results

I am bothered by the following fact:

When I go to open the PowerShell ISE, I search for in home screen. For some reason, it does not show up until I finish typing the whole name (powershell_ise) and then it shows up under apps.

Why is this?

Note: I can solve this problem by pinning the executable to the home screen. I want to know why it is occurring so I can prevent this from happening in the future (or at least know when it will happen to me)

EDIT: This appears to be a bug in windows (see here for reproduction). Any ideas on workarounds?

soandos

Posted 2012-07-22T02:12:05.553

Reputation: 22 744

Is search indexing (or something similar) turned on? – wizlog – 2012-07-22T02:29:12.850

@wizlog Yes, but that is not really the point. It finds the file just fine when I give it all the letters just not before. It does a partial match on everything else though. Why the inconsistency? – soandos – 2012-07-22T02:33:15.433

I can reproduce the problem on my Windows 8 VM. Perhaps it's a bug in the search algorithm. This is beta software after all. EDIT: A similar thing happens when I searched for Windows Update; it only showed up after a second attempt, when I narrowed it down to Settings. – None – 2012-07-22T02:49:07.733

@RandolphWest, but it did not show up in the file or apps category. Try searching for winhlp32.exe – soandos – 2012-07-22T02:52:43.133

winhlp32.exe came up in the results. Want to take this to chat? – None – 2012-07-22T02:55:27.913

@RandolphWest, sure. Before you finished the filename, or after? http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/4192/room-for-soandos-and-randolfwest

– soandos – 2012-07-22T03:01:35.383

I have added an answer which solves this problem. – None – 2012-08-20T01:02:41.667

Answers

The reason it's not showing up in your partial search, is because it's considered an Administrative Tool.

Administrative Tools do not show up by default, and that's why you have to type in the full name of the executable.

Fortunately, a recent MSDN blog entry explains this in detail, including instructions on how to make it appear.

Taking an excerpt, it works like this (formatting added by me):

You can enable the Administrative Tools on the Start screen by:

Opening the Start screen

Opening the settings for the Start screen with Win+I (Tip: Win+I is a context sensitive hotkey to bring up the settings for the app you are using, even if the “App” you are using is the Windows Desktop)

Selecting the “Tiles” option and toggling on the "Show administrative tools" option.

Tada! I can now search in the Start screen for PowerShell.

I have verified that this works on the RTM build of Windows 8.

user3463

Posted 2012-07-22T02:12:05.553

Reputation:

Very well done. – soandos – 2012-08-20T01:25:32.550

This bugged me, so when I saw it, I had to share it :-) – None – 2012-08-20T01:26:02.923

The Windows Start search only shows filename results with exact matches when it's the target of an indexed shortcut, but the file is otherwise unindexed. Because powershell_ise.exe isn't the name of a start menu shortcut, it's not indexed with partial naming, but you could create one with that name and get that behavior.

By default you should have a "Windows Powershell ISE" shortcut that will come up with partial matching, since it goes by the shortcut name... but something that confuses me is that the equivalent with "(x86)" at the end doesn't show up in partial results, but does show up with wildcards: appending a * to the end of your query, like power*. I have no idea why that is for that particular one.

Bottom line: The shortcut target name doesn't get any of that special behavior unless the actual executable location is indexed.

Note that this definitely applies to Win7 as well and I believe also Vista.

SilverbackNet

Posted 2012-07-22T02:12:05.553

Reputation: 962

Not sure what you are talking about. Files show up with partial search all the time. Try incrementally searching for "powershell" in the files section. – soandos – 2012-07-22T07:02:39.513

Sorry, I was tired and missed the most important part: The location isn't indexed, so you won't get the normal partial-name matching. The only reason it shows up at all is that it also does full-word matching on the shortcut link field as well. If you index the location, that will change. I'll edit my answer. – SilverbackNet – 2012-07-22T15:07:18.617

So you are saying that if I index everything, then partial matching will work for everything? – soandos – 2012-07-22T20:12:27.727