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I've recently deployed some new PCs with Windows 8.1 Enterprise. Some users experience a weird problem with Start Screen search in that some Windows programs are not returned in the results. For example, when you search for "background" you should see at least four system items. Searching for "color" should give you six system items. The affected users don't get any system results (though they may get results if any of their own files contain those words.)

An example of a search term that does work is "default". Affected users will get "Default Programs" as you'd expect.

I've tried a few different things but have not had full success.

  1. Rebuilding the search index.
  2. Deleting the user's profile and letting a new one be created.

If I give the user administrator rights on the PC the search works properly (whether they are using a new profile or not.) But here's the weird part: when I return them to a standard user the full search results stop being returned after a few minutes and they are back to where they started. (I suspect in this case the index is being "corrected" for the user's Standard permissions."

Is this a documented "feature"? I can't find any information on it and I can't imagine that this is how it's supposed to work because users can still access and run the programs that are not being returned in the search results which tells me it's not a matter of execution permissions.

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  • I must have not reset the profile correctly or mixed one memory with another because the only way we have been able to really solve this is to restart the profile. We have confirmed positive results with this method.
    – Chris76786777
    Commented Jul 2, 2014 at 21:51

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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Modify the search location of the user. The computer is not indexing all the fiules in the Computer fro that user.

Open control panel -> indexing options (shamless plug: search for indexing option) then Modify and selected thhe drives to be indexed. as shown

step 1 step2

Select the drives that you want to be indexed and wait for the list to be populated

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  • Thanks for the idea. I'm trying it out with someone now. I'm going to check in with them tomorrow after the indexing is complete to see how it turned out. When comparing my list of locations with theirs I see no significant difference. Neither of us have C: and the only other difference is that they have Offline Files and I don't. Still, if it works it's a more desirable solution than destroying the profile.
    – Chris76786777
    Commented Jul 2, 2014 at 22:06
  • It did not work. He now just sees more regular files than he did before.
    – Chris76786777
    Commented Jul 2, 2014 at 23:00
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Resetting the profile has been the only way we've found to fix this.

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