If you press Windows Key+F to open Search Explorer on Vista and try to search for some arbitrary file such as a DLL, chances are you won’t find it. This is because by default the Windows Search service doesn’t index all file types and doesn’t index all locations on your computer.
What can you do then if you need to quickly find some arbitrary file on Vista but don’t want to reconfigure the indexer and wait for the index to be updated? The solution is to open an elevated command prompt and type dir filename /s where filename is the full name of the file you want including its extension.
For more information on using search on Vista, see the Windows Vista Resource Kit, Second Edition.
