Windows Vista keeps track of the files on your computer in the index. The index stores information about files, including the file name, date modified, and properties like author, tags, and rating. When you search for files using the standard search functionality (Start || Search),  Windows actually leverages the index in order to perform very fast searches of the most common files on your computer (instead of scanning the entire Hard disk and finding the file).

By default , Vista indexes the user’s Document Folders, as well as his/her Outlook mailbox and Offline folders. This setting actually makes searches for files which aren’t placed under those directories quite time consuming.

Here’s a neat trick that you can implement in order to speed up files search in Vista. The basic idea is to get more folders indexed by Windows, and thus speed up the file search functionality.

• Click Start, click Control Panel
• Click System and Maintenance
• Click Indexing Options

• Click Modify
• Select additional folders you’ll like to include in the index. I recommend you to scan the entire partition that stores your documents ( IE: C:\ etc’) 
• Click OK 

[tags] Windows Vista, Vista, Windows tips, Windows Tricks, Windows XP [/tags]