Windows Indexing Service

The Windows Indexing Service is in Windows 2000 and Windows XP contained - usually in the background - executed service , which is intended to the hard drive content indexing . With the help of this service, search queries can be carried out within a few seconds; not only a search for file names, but also in the file contents ( full text search ). The indexing service only takes into account standard formats, such as *.txt, and some Microsoft formats, such as *.docand *.xls. Using so-called iFilter , the indexing service can also perform a full-text search in other file formats, such as. B. Adobe PDF , RTF , OpenDocument (OASIS OpenDocument file format), JFIF (metadata), XML or MP3 ( ID3 tags ).

Instructions on how to switch off the resource-hungry indexing service can be found on the web. It is noteworthy that the desktop search programs that have appeared since 2004, such as Google Desktop , Lookeen or Copernic Desktop Search , are very popular, although their core functionality is similar to that of the indexing service.