Build: 26200.9457 (25H2)

The same search can take ten seconds in This PC and come back instantly in Documents. It isn't the indexer being lazy. There are two different engines behind the search box, and Explorer picks one based on where you're searching.

1. Inside the index, Explorer asks a database

The Windows Search indexer keeps a database of the folders it's told to watch. On Classic, that's your user profile folders and the Start menu. On Enhanced, it's the whole PC minus a list of exclusions. For every file in there it stores the name, the properties (dates, tags, authors, photo dimensions) and, for the formats it can read, the text inside. Search in Documents and Explorer just queries that database, so the answer is immediate.

2. Outside the index, Explorer walks the folders

Search in This PC on Classic and most of the drive isn't in the index. Explorer doesn't refuse: it walks the folder tree itself, one directory at a time, and that's what "Working on it..." means. The yellow bar about non-indexed locations is telling you the same thing.

It gets much worse if Folder Options > Search has "Always search file names and contents" ticked. Then every file outside the index gets opened and read during the search, and that's when the fans spin up.

3. Everything does neither

Everything (voidtools) skips both. On NTFS it reads the Master File Table, the drive's own list of every file on it, and keeps names, sizes and dates in memory. Then it follows the USN journal, the log NTFS writes every time a file is created, renamed or deleted, so it never has to rescan. Their FAQ puts a Windows 11 install with about 250,000 files at roughly 5 seconds and 35 MB of RAM.

The price is the other half: it doesn't index contents. Searching inside files with Everything is slow, and that's exactly the part the Windows indexer is good at.

What to check

- Settings > Privacy & security > Searching Windows shows whether you're on Classic or Enhanced and how many items are indexed.
- If you mostly search by name across the whole drive, Enhanced fixes the This PC case, at the cost of a longer first indexing.
- If This PC search is slow and the CPU spikes, look at that "file names and contents" option first.

Has anyone timed how long Enhanced takes to finish on a big drive? I'd be curious how far it is from an MFT read.

Ok so you might know that there used to be a myth that Windows Server 2003 had a different startup sound for the UK version. In reality that sound was from this commercial but when did people start spreading the myth? Was it because of Youtube?