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When I enter a search term into my WIndows 7 Start Menu search bar, it invariably takes 20 seconds before returning any results.

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I don't understand why this is taking so long. What can I make the search return results faster and reduce the delay in returning obvious search results?

For example, I probably open notepad twenty times a day and I think that this result should be returned and load instantly upon typing note[Enter] whereas I currently type notepad{wait 20 seconds}[Enter]

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  • What about the 2nd time of doing that, or any second search, within say 30 seconds of doing it the first time? A few hard disks waking back up can take 5-15 seconds. Windows 7 search fun has created an even larger market for 3rd party replacements, you could try a few, and never look back.
    – Psycogeek
    Commented Aug 2, 2014 at 16:42
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    pastebin.com/9R3Ehbs3
    – magicandre1981
    Commented Aug 2, 2014 at 17:52
  • Rebuilding Index may help you, because by default, search locations include start menu search. This can be done by Control panel - Indexing Options. I had the same issue, and I rebuilt the index , it worked fine.
    – Ĭsααc tիε βöss
    Commented Aug 2, 2014 at 20:01

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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This issue was resolved by testing each item in Control Panel>Indexing Options>Modify and removing an entry that was very slow to respond.

The offending folder was Google Drive, which was very slow to respond both in Explorer and when searched via Start Menu. Now I have removed this from the Indexing I no longer have an absurd delay.

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    I think it's because the location is within My Documents and the Google Drive folder has a large amount of information that regularly changes (hence indexing is often out of date and/or broken)
    – JustinJDavies
    Commented Aug 7, 2014 at 9:38
  • How did you find which entry is the slow one?
    – Tomáš Zato
    Commented Aug 21, 2018 at 13:18
  • @TomášZato I simply tested using binary chop on all the indexed locations; the slow down disappeared once I removed the offending item.
    – JustinJDavies
    Commented Jan 2, 2019 at 23:32

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