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Since the Windows 8.1 update the start menu on my laptop is unusable. Every time I use the search box Explorer goes to max CPU % for a couple of minutes after I've stopped looking.

I know this is related to a lack of indexes and/or permissions on the AppData folder but I can't index all the files as that consumes even more resources for longer.

What I want to do, is tell Explorer that I don't want it trawling all 'these' folders in my AppData, just look in the start menu, maybe a couple of other places, but that's it! do NOT go off searching my entire profile tree, I don't need that.

All the articles I've come across so far discuss including or excluding things in the index but not the search results.

Now my laptop is a developer machine, and having given up fighting convention years ago I've been following standard practice and now all my working files live in my AppData profile. So by the time I've built software, downloaded git source control trees and the like, the contents of my profile could be changing by hundreds of MB if not GB per day. The indexer doesn't seem to be able to cope with this. So therefore, indexing these locations (even if I wanted them searched) is NOT an option.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm very happy to use the new start menu to search for, and to launch programs and that's largely all I really need from the start menu. I'm quite happy with the design in principle but it needs to work!

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  • I'm not positive that this will work, but try creating a library of the locations you do want trawled and searching that library in explorer. It's not perfect, because it's not the start menu search, but you could just pin a link to this library in the start menu.
    – Devon Parsons
    Commented Apr 7, 2014 at 10:50
  • Thanks for the thought, but that won't fly because it's largely the start menu items I actually want to search when I'm on the start menu. I don't actually care that much if it doesn't find a single other file or library. I just want the start menu to work. The start menu is unusable unless it stops locking up explorer. Wierdly though, this has only been a problem since 8.1, 8 was fine.
    – cirrus
    Commented Apr 7, 2014 at 11:00
  • What do you have listed in your Indexing Options? I'm using 8.1 and my Start Menu search doesn't look in any of my AppData folders (I only have 'Start Menu' listed in my Indexing Options).
    – snowdude
    Commented Apr 7, 2014 at 13:58
  • @snowdude I believe that's indexing not search. I can deselect AppData and I have deselected most of it and most of the other options. All that means is it won't use the index, but it'll still search AFAICT. NOT having things in the index makes it even worse because it still trawls all the files = that's the problem.
    – cirrus
    Commented Apr 7, 2014 at 14:56
  • I believe the two are connected. Search relies on the index.
    – snowdude
    Commented Apr 10, 2014 at 12:58

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