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Tweak Indexing Options for More Performance

Posted February 2007 by Steve Sinchak

The indexing service in Windows Vista is responsible for making those search boxes all over the operating system lightening fast. By default Windows automatically indexes all files in your user profile folders, start menu and any files you have setup for offline access. If you have a lot of files in these locations and the files change often you can be putting a heavy load on the indexing service.  For maximum performance when using Windows Vista I recommend disabling indexing for all other locations other than the Start Menu.  This will lessen the background work that Windows Vista has to do.  It will also slow down your searches of other locations but that is the price you must pay for this performance benefit.

Follow these steps to tweak the indexing locations:

  1. Click on the Start Button and key in Indexing Options and hit Enter. Indexing Options will now load.

2. Hit the Modify button. 3. Next, click on Show all locations. 4. Scroll through the tree-view and uncheck any folders you do not want to be indexed.  When you are finished, click OK. 5. If you want to change advanced indexing settings such as what file types are indexed click on the Advanced button. Otherwise hit Close.

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