![\"clip_image002\"](\"http:\/\/www.jerrypournelle.com\/chaosmanor\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/clip_image00270.gif\" "\\"clip_image002\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nMy old editor Paul Schindler is coming over for a hike and due in a few minutes so I\u2019ll post this and the account I wrote about scanpst for now. More on other stuff later.<\/p>\n
Windows 7 search sucks.<\/p>\n One reason I continue to use Windows 7 rather than convert everything to a Mac is that I do like Microsoft Office, in large part because after this many years, books, columns mail, blogs, taxes, and the rest I\u2019m pretty well used to it, and I\u2019ve got past going off exploring new computer stuff just for the fun of it.<\/p>\n One program I use is Outlook, which over the years has evolved into something that works pretty well, particularly in my case. I get about 1,600 spam messages a day. My ISP catches about half of them. Outlook junk mail filters catch another 200. I have crafted a set of rules that get a lot more. My problem is that I need to see press releases \u2013 some of them \u2013 and spammers have become clever about sanding larger and larger clocks of plain text from Shakespeare or other legitimate sources to swamp the spam filters, and they still get through, — which wouldn\u2019t be so bad if they didn\u2019t send a dozen or so of the same message. Every day. Anyway, for good or ill, I am stuck with Outlook, and Outlook uses pst files which grow ever larger and larger.<\/p>\n Eventually a pst file will be interrupted in some way and become corrupt, and the next time you run Outlook you will be told to run scanpst.exe. Since scanpst.exe is always installed with office that ought to be easy, and it would be if I left Office in the place where Microsoft puts it, but for good reasons I keep Outlook in a root directory called C:\\Outlook. Recently I got the \u201crun scanpst.exe\u201d message \u2013 and I couldn\u2019t find scanpst anywhere. I mentioned this in the blog, and thanks to readers I can now find it, but it makes for an interesting story.<\/p>\n I found C:\\Programfiles(x86)\\Microsoftoffice\\office12\\scanpst.exe, thanks to readers. It\u2019s there, but Windows 7 search doesn\u2019t find it. Even an extended search. Interestingly, when I did Search on this machine, it found plenty of documents that referenced scanpst.exe, but no such program: however, when I did an extended search to \u201cComputer\u201d which includes searches of mapped drives on networked machines, search found scanpst.exe all right \u2013 on another machine, Emily. Meanwhile search on Emily fails to find scanpst.exe. <\/p>\n Windows 7 has a very fast search system in the sense that if it\u2019s going to find something it finds it pretty fast. It does that by building indices in background. But the search isn\u2019t thorough, it\u2019s hard to use if it doesn\u2019t find something instantly, and in general it sucks compared to the Search program Windows had from at least windows 95 through Windows XP. One wonders if Microsoft programmers use their own operating system, or if they have some secret egrep function they can run? Because this Windows 7 search system sucks dead bunnies.<\/p>\n I also experimented with opening a command window and trying to run scanpst. It cannot find the file. Try cd\\ to get to the root. Run scanpst. Can\u2019t find it. Work my way down the directories, cd Program Files (x86) and run scanpst. Can\u2019t find it. Eventually I get to C:\\Programfiles(x86)\\Microsoftoffice\\office12 and try to run scanpst, and LO! it works. Clearly I need to play with the registry to add that to the path to be searched for commands, and clearly I don\u2019t care enough to do that. I\u2019ll live with this, but Microsoft really should pay some attention to the current search function. The simplest think it could do is add the old Search we all got used to. The new system is fine but sometimes we really need to find something that the current search doesn\u2019t believe in.<\/p>\n Regarding that Office12, that\u2019s Office 2007. If you have Office 2010 that will be in the Office14 directory. Windows 7 is really easy to use except that it isn\u2019t, sometimes. Just like the Mac OS, but with Mac you can, as a last resort, get to a command window with real like UNIX and egrep. And I wonder if the Microsoft programmers don\u2019t have some secret method of doing that since they clearly don\u2019t use the standard Windows 7 search. And so far none of this is fixed in any version of Windows 8 I have seen, but it\u2019s very early days on that.<\/p>\n Windows 7 search<\/p>\n It is a little irritating when the search indices don’t yield desired results. Command prompt and a very old DOS command still works well. Result close to instantaneous when run on my heavily abused laptop.<\/p>\n C:\\>dir \/s scanpst.exe<\/p>\n Volume in drive C has no label.<\/p>\n Volume Serial Number is AEE1-B8B9<\/p>\n Directory of C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office\\Office15<\/p>\n 04\/08\/2012 03:16 PM 40,088 SCANPST.EXE<\/p>\n 1 File(s) 40,088 bytes<\/p>\n Regards,<\/p>\n Lee<\/p>\n Lee Coward<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Which works just fine, and I had forgotten although I knew this at one time. Thanks!<\/p>\n View 630 Wednesday, June 27, 2012 I hear a ton of speculations about why the court found parts of the Arizona illegal aliens laws unconstitutional while keeping the \u201cYour papers, please,\u201d provision that was really the heart of the Arizona system. Arizona cannot, according to the USSC, make it a \u2026 Continue reading <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n\n
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