Why in 2023 does this simple task break Windows 10 ?

[Halcyon]

Forget Windows search.

I use Agent Ransack - https://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack/

Quite powerful. There is a free version and a pro version (USD$69 for 3 computers).

[ramussons]

Have you tried Ultra Search?
https://www.jam-software.com/ultrasearch

[pickle9000]

freecommander is pretty good search wise. Its stand alone. It can search inside files for text but in some cases like pdf's you need to donate a bit to get access to the conversion program. Well worth it. It's free otherwise.

[celly67]

I'm trying to find a radio schematic or article I have on my PC, and so in File Explorer I enter terms in the search box, and also click to organize by date. And it breaks file explorer, it just can't get past about 1/2 way without the program just closing, no error or warnings.  I'm guessing it's the 'list by date part' that breaks it, but that's crazy. I have a top of the line machine, with SSD's, and I'm only searching on 1 SSD, and it's perfectly healthy.

If Bill Gates tried the same search on Windows 10, would it happen to him too ? And would he care anymore ?

it is even possible that bill gates might be countering with that situation!!!!

[SiliconWizard]

As already said earlier, many MS employees actually use Macs.
It's funny to notice that one of Dave Plummer's (the retired MS developer who has become a millionaire and keeps talking about his past experience at MS) latest videos is titled "Save Money by Buying a Mac Pro".

[SeanB]

Latest from Dave is about monitors.



But for me a search on the entire system for a file containing something will take around 5 minutes if I select the entire filesystem instead of /home only, including in some cases processor ID strings that match.....

[brucehoult]

As already said earlier, many MS employees actually use Macs.
It's funny to notice that one of Dave Plummer's (the retired MS developer who has become a millionaire and keeps talking about his past experience at MS) latest videos is titled "Save Money by Buying a Mac Pro".

He's right, both in that sufficiently expanding a Mac Pro will end up cheaper than expanding a Mac Studio, and in that for many people it's worth spending that kind of money on a computer. Even if it's $10k+ it's still vastly less money than a farmer spends on a tractor or a truckie on a Kenworth or even than a car mechanic or plumber spends on their work tools.

The problem I have is that the Mac Pro and Studio don't offer value for what I as a software developer need. I'm not throwing around terabytes of video files with huge disks and crazy transfer speeds, and high end GPUs and networking and storage are completely wasted money for me.

In my current work project the entire directory is 42 GB, with the actual source code directory is 981 MB of which .git is 856 MB. The cost of enough extra RAM to keep all of that stuff in disk cache is pretty minor, and even if not, a consumer 3 GB/s SSD is fine.

What I *do* need is a lot of cores for the parallel compile steps, and a high 1 or 2 core turbo for the constantly interleaved ./configure and link -- and finishing up that one rogue C++ compile (it's always C++ not C...) that takes minutes.

15 years ago my then employer was fairly easily persuaded to give me an 8 core 2.26 GHz Mac Pro (2x Xeon E5520 Nehalem, max turbo 2.47 GHz) instead of the standard high end MacBook Pro (2.93 GHz Core 2 Duo), as the price was very similar at MBP $3100, Pro $3300 in std config but the MBP needed a RAM expansion. The Pro was obviously a LOT faster in general for building software. My recollection was 15 min vs 60 min to do a clean build.

BUT, I build myself a custom i7-860 (also Nehalem) quad core machine: 2.8 GHz base, 3.3 turbo. I Hackintoshed it and it built the same software in 12 minutes, and cost a heck of a lot less than the Mac Pro. A mild overclock to 3.05 base 3.6 turbo sealed the deal :-)

That was the start of several generations of my building Hackintoshes using CPUs Apple didn't use at the time, but put into the top end iMac 6 or 9 months later. i7-860, i7-4790K, i7-6700K...

I've just bought a new machine. It arrived in Auckland this morning, hopefully I'll have it tomorrow afternoon.

I was looking at Dave's 24 core (16 P + 8 E) Mac Studio. With 64 GB RAM and a 1 TB SSD it's $3999. The top 16" MacBook Pro with a 16 core M3 Max (12 P + 4 E) and the same config is $4199.

What I actually ended up buying is a Lenovo 16" laptop with a 24 core (8 P + 16 E) i9-13900HX, with 32 GB RAM (can upgrade it to 64 later) and 1 TB SSD for $1750.

Compared to the Studio with M2 Ultra, Geekbench has the mobile i9 as 10% faster single core, 20% slower multi core. The M3 Max MBP comes in 3% faster single core, 20% faster multi core.

Hopefully I'm going to be happy with the i9 Lenovo with a $2000 saving even after upgrading the RAM.

[Mechatrommer]

Dave Plummer's

He's right

no he isnt.. 9K is 60 years of Adobe Premiere Pro subscription. including top notch custom Winglows and Intel/Ryzen PC to match the spec, 1K est, 2K top.. thats 45 years of Adobe Premiere Pro. do you want to stuck with a system for 40-60 years? within "Mac's Domain" or "Mac's World" (comparing to Mac Studio) he's probably right. but M$ is not a video editor, and $$ does not proportional to intelligence.

Even if it's $10k+ it's still vastly less money than a farmer spends on a tractor or a truckie on a Kenworth or even than a car mechanic or plumber spends on their work tools.

the only sane reason imho to waste money on that crap or figure is if you can get it back at least double figure net revenue in a year or less.. ie if video editing is your butter and bread. you should already realized it by now 

[brucehoult]

Dave Plummer's

He's right

no he isnt.. 9K is 60 years of Adobe Premiere Pro subscription. including top notch custom Winglows and Intel/Ryzen PC to match the spec, 1K est, 2K top.. thats 45 years of Adobe Premiere Pro. do you want to stuck with a system for 40-60 years? within "Mac's Domain" or "Mac's World" (comparing to Mac Studio) he's probably right. but M$ is not a video editor, and $$ does not proportional to intelligence.

Even if it's $10k+ it's still vastly less money than a farmer spends on a tractor or a truckie on a Kenworth or even than a car mechanic or plumber spends on their work tools.

the only sane reason imho to waste money on that crap or figure is if you can get it back at least double figure net revenue in a year or less.. ie if video editing is your butter and bread. you should already realized it by now 

What has a Premier subscription got to do with anything? That's down in the noise.

The proper thing to compare it to is the $100k to $200k salary of the person operating it -- fully loaded salary if you're the employer. If a $10k machine is fast enough or slick enough to make the human 10% more efficient than a $1k or $2k machine then it's paid for itself in a year -- and you're probably going to keep it 2 or 3 years.

He's talking about video editing, but I do software development. With my current machine -- a 5 year old 32 core Threadripper 2990WX -- building the software I'm working on (for the last four months and probably the next year) takes 20 min to 40 min each time, depending on the options e.g. debug or release, build tests or not. That's often a many times per day task. A machine that can halve or quarter that would be worth paying a lot for.

[Mechatrommer]

If a $10k machine is fast enough or slick enough to make the human 10% more efficient than a $1k or $2k machine then it's paid for itself in a year

has it been proven?

That's often a many times per day task. A machine that can halve or quarter that would be worth paying a lot for.

Mac Pro cant... can it?

What has a Premier subscription got to do with anything? That's down in the noise.
The proper thing to compare it to is the $100k to $200k salary of the person operating it
He's talking about video editing

i was talking about lone ranger content maker in tiktok, if talking about company, company can afford anything, why they do even care if they want to buy Mac Studio? it only few thousands more? did i mention $$ is not intelligence? cheers.

[cfbsoftware]

I'm trying to find a radio schematic or article I have on my PC, and so in File Explorer I enter terms in the search box, and also click to organize by date.

I highly recommend a search tool called Everything from VoidTools.

https://www.voidtools.com

There's some introductory info about it in the FAQ:

https://www.voidtools.com/faq

What is "Everything"?
"Everything" is search engine that locates files and folders by filename instantly for Windows.

Unlike Windows search "Everything" initially displays every file and folder on your computer (hence the name "Everything").

You type in a search filter to limit what files and folders are displayed.

How long will it take to index my files?
"Everything" only indexes file and folder names and generally takes a few seconds to build its database.

A fresh install of Windows 10 (about 120,000 files) will take about 1 second to index.

1,000,000 files will take about 1 minute.
...
...

[rsjsouza]

freecommander is pretty good search wise. Its stand alone. It can search inside files for text but in some cases like pdf's you need to donate a bit to get access to the conversion program. Well worth it. It's free otherwise.

+1 as well. I also have been using Freecommander for the last 10+ years as a full replacement for the terrible Windows Explorer and its broken features. Its Find feature is exceptional and its customization allows adding shortcuts to its top toolbar and integrate with other  other third party utilities - I configured it to launch Beyond Compare with a simple keystroke, which allows complete directory and file comparison as well.

Although free, I gave money to the developer for their great work!

(I did this with other utilities that I use often, such as Beyond Compare, IrfanView, Winrar, etc.)

[dferyance]

WinFS was one of the original Windows Vista features but it was canceled. It was going to greatly improve searching, it combined the filesystem with a database. Now Microsoft cares about web search and cloud stuff and not your PC being useful.

Windows Explorer is in a difficult position. It enabled a lot of extensibility features which developers took advantage of. But these extensions often cause it to crash or run slow. I know MS has done some work to reduce the impact of extensions but I still find installing applications often make Windows Explorer run slower. So it is hard to know if an issue is really and OS issue or an application issue hiding in explorer.

[Jason Henry]

It's possible that Bill Gates might experience similar issues, as software bugs can affect anyone regardless of their status or expertise. However, whether he would care anymore depends on his current level of involvement and priorities.