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Yea as a programmer, a good search tool is indispensable; the best free and open source one I found so far is WinGrep:
http://www.wingrep.com/

Hmmm...maybe it used to be, but now it looks like it's shareware...which isn't necessarily a deal-breaker, if it does what I need.

Also, it seems to default to searching contents as well as filenames for everything...? In fact, I can't see the option to tell it not to search file contents (ooh, there it is, 'Search files in list', however then it won't search in zip files)? The quick context preview is nice, although you can't see the previews until the whole search is done, and the ability to run another search restricted to the results of the first could be handy...hmmm. It also seems to be quite thorough, if also quite slow (I had no idea how many photos I had with the word 'test' in their metadata). And I see it automagically adds itself to the context menu for Windows Explorer...not sure if I consider that a 'good thing' or not.

Oh, wow. I haven't seen an app crash that hard on XP in a long time. Apparently it *really* doesn't like it when you cancel a search in progress...nothing but endless 'Out of resource' message boxes...

Overall, thanks for the tip, but I think I'll look elsewhere, unless it performs *much* better under Windows 7. *sigh*

Yea as a programmer, a good search tool is indispensable; the best free and open source one I found so far is WinGrep:
http://www.wingrep.com/

And yes, I left out grep because there typically wasn't a great Windows equivalent.

WinGrep isn't bad (though not free in either sense).

I agree Windows Search sucks and can't find anything. Windows GREP is superior in every way: http://www.wingrep.com/

http://www.wingrep.com/

Why not just download http://www.wingrep.com/ ?

1. TextPad is a must.
2. The Windows Power Toys are worth taking a look at (I personally like the 'Open Command Window Here' tool).
3. Azureus for BitTorrent.
4. Windows Grep comes in handy for searching files (No thanks Google Desktop).
5. And of course, Visual Studio Express to get your hands dirty with some code.

Windows XP's default search function won't find text in the majority of file I tell it to search through... it's ridiculous.

Right. That's because of this piece of stupidity from someone as MS: Using the "A word or phrase in the file" search criterion may not work

... and it's why I always use Windows Grep to search through a bunch of text files. Actually, Windows search worked identically to Windows Grep back in Win9x.

Try WinGrep

Dont forget Windows Grep

As a developer trapped in windows I find this little tool incredibly usefull.