Cannot Find Files Or Search The Web In Start Button / Menu
Oct 23, 2015
I got Windows 10 home a few months now. No problems whatsoever with the installation or setup/usage and it'd fast and bug free. My problem happened just last week...
I used to press the WIN key & S to search for files. Or i can press the START button and just start typing. It will search for my files & search the internet (cortana search). Now nothing happens when i search.
When i press WIN+S, and type something, it just sit's there doing nothing, but it seems like Cortana is thinking or about to give out information, but nothing happens at all. Same as on the start menu. I type out something and no information is given, it wont search for any of my files or nothing.
I am at a lost. In the past, it worked perfectly, like Windows 8.1. Press START, & type.
How to get / find the search box for windows 10 for start menu etc.I just upgraded yesterday & did whatever updates that needed to be done & still nothing.
I installed Windows 10 very recently and I like it, but I have a VERY BIG show-stopper: when I try to do search in the start menu, it's terrible; it cannot even find an application that I have manually pinned to start. I didn't have any such problem with Windows 8.1. I have also installed some other desktop applications, for example GitHub for Windows, but when I start to to type "Git...", it only finds "GitHub" and it cannot find "Git Shell" and I have to go to all programs, find "G", then expand the folder for this application and run that application.
I've noticed now on multiple computers I've installed Windows 10 on, that a quick win-key search isn't able to bring up installed apps. I'm sure this isn't how it's meant to be, and that there must be a fix... right?
I've recently made a huge research about Roaming profiles in windows 10 and how to set up the start menu layout and all of that i've tried to test it before i upgrade all the computers in the campus i made some good and bad results, the good results was i was able to export the start layout and implement it in the GPO works really fine and i was able to create the v5 roaming profile with same shortcuts and bookmarks and default settings and home page and disabling cortana by GPO and disabling the online search feature within the settings of the roaming profile,
now for the bad results were that the sign in could take from 25 till 40 seconds so the log off, and the major issue is that when you logon with the roaming profile the start menu and search are not available, it means that when you click on start menu the whole start menu doesnt pop up just nothing happens same as the search function. I am running windows 10 enterprise .
I forgot to mention that even the EDGE icon from taskbar disappears so i think its not either moving files or folders arent being synchronized im not really sure. IE remains...
I installed Windows 10 from Windows 7 and I have some minor problems with the start menu. When I search for an installed program most of the times it wont find it but instead it will show me to look it on the web. I believe that it has a connection with the fact that the menu "All apps" doesn't show all apps but only some of them.
When I Installed Win 10, if I wanted to quickly access one of those 6 Win 10 PC 'Folders' (Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures, Videos), I would just had to type in the folder in the start menu search box, press Enter and it would access the folder.As soon as I changed the folders' original location, this 'typing shortcut' did not work anymore.is it even possible to make typing shortcuts to folders or files in the search box? (i.e typing "x" for a specific folder named "y")
Many times when I search from the Start Menu, results come up for files that have been deleted or moved but the old path is listed in the results (so that clicking it throws me a "File cannot be found" type error).
I first noticed this when I moved a folder of PDF manuals to a new location. The titles of these files will come up when searching from the Start Menu but the paths are linked to the original locations and so Windows can't "find" the file when I click on it in the search results.
I did a CCleaner sweep of my system and even tried rebuilding the search index but cannot correct this nonsense. What's going on?
when i search from the start menu, all i want to find is applications (desktop apps, metro apps, shortcus to apps in the all-applications menu) and settings, not files and folders. (i already disabled the web search there).
i still want to be able to search files when searching from antoher places, just not when searching from the start menu, so disabling the index is not an option for me.
I have my Windows 10 for around 3 days now, the thing is, in the second day after my computer froze when i was playing counter strike, everything in the task bar but my shortcuts stopped working, they dont open anymore, but when i click it, the cursor blue loading circle shows up but nothing happens.
I have hundreds of videos but when I try to search for them by using IN this PC the Kind:=video command the search come up empty. It simply cannot find anything I ask it to search for. I do not want to use third party search applications. I just want it to work.
When I "search my stuff" from the start menu, some files that I know to be indexed never show up in the results. And at the top of the search window, it reads: "These results may be incomplete, search is still indexing your stuff."
I've rebuilt the search index, which says it finished successfully, indexing 3000-something items, but the problem remains.
Problem:I press Start / I type the filename of any files I know exist in my Google Drive folder (c:/users/Luke/Google Drive) nothing appears.It says "Windows is still indexing some files. This might not be everything just yet."
Thing is, if I go to Indexing Options, it clearly says "Indexing complete." and there's no HDD activity (and it's had ages to rebuild the index)... and I rebuilt the index (~500,000 files).
The best workaround I've found is switching off Indexing (which reveals files in Google Drive folder, but now searching the whole computer takes forever)
On my desktop computer I have a folder and some files which have a common part of a name on both such as the name of the folder could be Folder and the files could be called Folder/file1, Folder/file2 etc. Doing a search in documents or even drilling down closer(these folders and files are about 5 levels down, if I used the name Folder, I don't find the folder or the files which had Folder as part of their name.
I cleared the search file and rebuilt the index and it still couldn't find the files.
I have a laptop which contains the same files as my desktop. I opened explorer and keyed in "Folder" and they popped right up. The only difference in the machines is that the desktop has an upgrade to Windows 10 from Windows 7 and the laptop is a Windows 10 from scratch. I have checked the search ribbon on explorer and all options and other items are identical between the two machines.
When I rebuilt the search file, I even added the drive that actually contained the Documents folder which the system is smart enough to know that the drive contained the documents folder so it removed the documents folder from the list when it added the drive. No change.
Interesting thing happened though. With all my frustrations, I restored to a C drive image from a week before to see what would happen. and immediately after the restore completed, I tried the search and it worked. So then I tried it again and it didn't work. Even drilling down the folder tree to the specific folder which contained the files so I'm looking at them while I'm keying in the search argument and it still can't find them.
Problem: I press Start I type the filename of any files I know exist in my Google Drive folder (c:/users/Luke/Google Drive) nothing appears.
It says "Windows is still indexing some files. This might not be everything just yet."
Thing is, if I go to Indexing Options, it clearly says "Indexing complete." and there's no HDD activity (and it's had ages to rebuild the index)...
...oh and I rebuilt the index (~500,000 files).
The best workaround I've found is switching off Indexing (which reveals files in Google Drive folder, but now searching the whole computer takes forever)
I'm running Windows 10 and have been since it was first released. This morning I was playing a game, and my sound stopped working, so I rebooted my computer to see if that would fix it. It fixed the problem, but I had no icons pinned on my taskbar, no time & date, and the search and start button would not work. After hard-booting the computer for a second time, there was still nothing. When I open a program the icon doesn't show on the taskbar.
Win 10 Enterprise. Worked fine for a couple of days, but now I cannot seem to bring up the start menu and start typing anything. It will not search. I also tried in the search box or spyglass... I just click on it and nothing happens. It is a major inconvenience. I don't want to do a restore and keep my files, because there is a HUGE list of applications I will then need to restore. I also tried to click on Cortana, but clicking the app does nothing, doesn't even bring it up.
I tried re-indexing search items, I tried the search troubleshooter. I have rebooted, I have installed all updates. Someone on another forum said kill the Cortana task... well there isn't one running.
Earlier today I tried to rebuild the windows search index, only to find out that I currently have no locations indexed. I also cannot modify to add any new locations. Windows search troubleshooter shows the following results:
I went to services and tried to start the windows search service, only to be given an error message about the path specified not existing. This doesn't make any sense because I can literally see the windows search executable:
I have just upgraded to Win10 and most items on the "Power User Command Menu" do not work if the menu is accessed by right-clicking the Start Menu button on the Task Bar. The only items that do work are Search, Run, Shut down and Desktop. If the menu is accessed by the other means, the menu items work fine.
I've tried SFC and a day searching the web with no luck.
The computer is a Toshiba laptop running an Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T5500 with 4 Gb of memory. I don't know what the proper name for the "Power User Command Menu" may be, but that's the only way I've seen it referenced elsewhere.
This problem is on a desktop computer (HP Pavilion). When I click the start button, the start menu does not display. Pressing the Windows key on the keyboard also does not take me to the start menu.
I can access the right-click menu on the start button and most of the items on the right-click menu respond correctly when clicked (a few don't. No response from "Search" and "Desktop"). I installed Windows 10 over a month ago and have had no problems until now. Everything was working fine yesterday and to the best of my knowledge I have changed no settings since then.
I'm running the RTM on a netbook and have noticed that, unlike in Windows 7/8/8.1, I'm no longer able to hit Start and type in an executable. I have a bunch of portable apps that I typically type in and pull up. Now, the Start menu search pulls up ever OTHER file except the executable. It's very annoying and don't see why this shouldn't work.
What's worse, is if I pin the app to the start menu, it doesn't search it then. Say, I pin "puttyportable.exe" as a shortcut (and rename it to just PuTTY) to the start menu. Typing in "putty" gives me nothing - just the same associated files that were in the puttyportable folder (ini files, etc).
