Windows Search in Terminal Services for Adam Browne

Today I encountered a strange problem – windows search was returning no results now on a single pc this is an annoyance but on a 2 terminal servers (citrix 4.5 PS) with 20+ users on each this was starting to create issues.

After looking at all settings for searching etc I narrowed the problem down to the fact that no one seemed to have the “include subfolders” box ticked. Not a problem I say tick it on one close Windows search only to go in and find out it’s now unticked again. Starting to get strange looks from the customer I explained it was a search setting that only administrators can configure and to leave it to me.

I returned back to the server room to go through all of the settings for searching once again to no avail. I Googled, I looked on Experts exchange I even looked at a few news groups but no one seems to have had this problem before and if they have they clearly haven’t put anything about it online!

I noticed that my own search(as a domain admin) had “include subfolders” ticked – a simple reg search later revealed that there was a REG_DWORD value on my hive reg settings.

I took note of this value (IncludeSubFolders - REG_DWORD – 0x00000001 (1) )

I opened both terminal server registry’s and inserted the above reg value in to the following locations:

HKEY_USERS.DEFAULT
Software
Microsoft
Windows
CurrentVersion
Explorer


I got a user to log off and log on and to my amazement the box was ticked! Even better I unticked it closed search and reopened it and it was still ticked!! Awesome!

Thanks Adam Cool Post!