4 ms·

This class of user has always been doing such silly things long before "monetization". There were plenty of guides for Windows XP and Vista claiming to "increa

This class of user has always been doing such silly things long before "monetization". There were plenty of guides for Windows XP and Vista claiming to "increase performance" by disabling things like the indexer (fun fact, that will TANK your performance in a variety of areas), the Cryptographic services, and more. They never had any trust to violate, only a strange (and completely incorrect) sense that they knew more than the engineers who built the OS in the first place.

vbezhenar 5y ago
Dell Optimizer tweaks some stuff in OS. Worst of all: it does not even ask whether I want it, it just does it automatically.
sumtechguy 5y ago
In Vista RTM and sp1 turning off indexer was a great solution. It was monster on the drive and memory (5-10 min startups on computers that should be up in 30-60 seconds and were after you turned things like that off). They fixed it in sp2. Superfetch was just as bad as well as the windows defender. Most of that was fixed in win7. I now let all 3 of those services run. The issues were fixed... The problem is these 'solutions' never go away. They are never revisited. So people just keep applying them because 15 years ago they had an issue with them.
- rasz 5y ago
  but why would you let indexer run at all when Everything (https://www.voidtools.com https://www.voidtools.com) runs faster, is more accurate, and is a small standalone executable?
  - OrvalWintermute 5y ago
    In general I do not like Microsoft's integrated indexer because I noticed it really slowed down performance, and seemed to hog memory. Appreciate the utility you pointed out, will happily look into it.
  - abrookewood 5y ago
    Please try Everything if you have never tried it before. It is BLAZINGLY fast. From memory it runs off the File Allocation Table to achieve its speed.
    - 112233 5y ago
      Looks like it still needs to build index of file names for searching. If you need to search local ntfs drive, try https://sourceforge.net/projects/swiftsearch/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/swiftsearch/ It does not build any indexes, and always shows up to date results (by scanning MFT)
      - rasz 5y ago
        It doesnt, running it in the background to build up cache is optional.
  - EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 5y ago
    They are completely different products. Everything searches just file names, while Windows indexer also searches file contents. It is a much more time consuming task.
kaetemi 5y ago
Still seeing more issues with the indexer on than when it's off. With the indexer on, searching for a file in a directory structure with only a couple hundred files easily takes minutes for some reason. No idea how that thing is supposed to be helping, really. My custom search tool that just iteratively scans folders is practically instant.
- bckr 5y ago
  is that because it's searching inside the files for keywords, while your tool only looks at filenames?
  - kaetemi 5y ago
    Possible. Although having Notepad++ do a content search is still faster. The Windows search usually just hangs with zero results for quite a while. Can find it faster by browsing manually.
tored 5y ago
Oh memories, Windows 98 Lite. Removed IE and replaced explorer.exe with the binary that was shipped with Windows 95.
- hestefisk 5y ago
  Aah yes. Oh the joy of disabling Active Desktop :)
serf 5y ago
>They never had any trust to violate, only a strange (and completely incorrect) sense that they knew more than the engineers who built the OS in the first place. So regardless of the metrics that support such practice, and casting aside the thousands of people that have routinely seen benefit from the practice, Windows can't be optimized further by the end-user? As someone who has never encountered a well optimized Microsoft product, and as someone who has routinely had to modify their off-the-shell installs, color me suspicious. (Agreed, the shady practices and over-zealous disabling of services should stop; but come on -- the end user occasionally understands what they need to do better than the engineer that sold them a generic tool to facilitate generic computer-enabled work.)
fomine3 5y ago
Don't forget "Memory Optimizer" on XP era that just page out program/cache!

vbezhenar 5y ago

Dell Optimizer tweaks some stuff in OS. Worst of all: it does not even ask whether I want it, it just does it automatically.

sumtechguy 5y ago

In Vista RTM and sp1 turning off indexer was a great solution. It was monster on the drive and memory (5-10 min startups on computers that should be up in 30-60 seconds and were after you turned things like that off). They fixed it in sp2. Superfetch was just as bad as well as the windows defender. Most of that was fixed in win7. I now let all 3 of those services run. The issues were fixed... The problem is these 'solutions' never go away. They are never revisited. So people just keep applying them because 15 years ago they had an issue with them.

rasz 5y ago
but why would you let indexer run at all when Everything (https://www.voidtools.com https://www.voidtools.com) runs faster, is more accurate, and is a small standalone executable?
- OrvalWintermute 5y ago
  In general I do not like Microsoft's integrated indexer because I noticed it really slowed down performance, and seemed to hog memory. Appreciate the utility you pointed out, will happily look into it.
- abrookewood 5y ago
  Please try Everything if you have never tried it before. It is BLAZINGLY fast. From memory it runs off the File Allocation Table to achieve its speed.
  - 112233 5y ago
    Looks like it still needs to build index of file names for searching. If you need to search local ntfs drive, try https://sourceforge.net/projects/swiftsearch/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/swiftsearch/ It does not build any indexes, and always shows up to date results (by scanning MFT)
    - rasz 5y ago
      It doesnt, running it in the background to build up cache is optional.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 5y ago
  They are completely different products. Everything searches just file names, while Windows indexer also searches file contents. It is a much more time consuming task.

kaetemi 5y ago

Still seeing more issues with the indexer on than when it's off. With the indexer on, searching for a file in a directory structure with only a couple hundred files easily takes minutes for some reason. No idea how that thing is supposed to be helping, really. My custom search tool that just iteratively scans folders is practically instant.

bckr 5y ago
is that because it's searching inside the files for keywords, while your tool only looks at filenames?
- kaetemi 5y ago
  Possible. Although having Notepad++ do a content search is still faster. The Windows search usually just hangs with zero results for quite a while. Can find it faster by browsing manually.

tored 5y ago

Oh memories, Windows 98 Lite. Removed IE and replaced explorer.exe with the binary that was shipped with Windows 95.

hestefisk 5y ago
Aah yes. Oh the joy of disabling Active Desktop :)

serf 5y ago

>They never had any trust to violate, only a strange (and completely incorrect) sense that they knew more than the engineers who built the OS in the first place. So regardless of the metrics that support such practice, and casting aside the thousands of people that have routinely seen benefit from the practice, Windows can't be optimized further by the end-user? As someone who has never encountered a well optimized Microsoft product, and as someone who has routinely had to modify their off-the-shell installs, color me suspicious. (Agreed, the shady practices and over-zealous disabling of services should stop; but come on -- the end user occasionally understands what they need to do better than the engineer that sold them a generic tool to facilitate generic computer-enabled work.)

fomine3 5y ago

Don't forget "Memory Optimizer" on XP era that just page out program/cache!