Troubleshooting Your PC For Dummies®

Chapter 9. Losing Things, Finding Things

There's an art to finding things. I find my stuff because I try to put it in the same place all the time. That works, but I still have moments of frantic searching when I misplace something. In those frenzies, I follow my mother's advice to "retrace your steps," and eventually I find the thing. Once, my grandmother lost her car keys and resorted to using something called "Kreskin's crystal" to help her psychically locate them. (It worked.) I'm sure other folks have other tricks for finding things, but I'll promise you that few will work inside your computer. That's why I wrote this chapter: to show you how to find things you have lost inside your PC.

Finding Files Lost and Lonely

In the top drawer of the Windows treasure chest is a wonderfully powerful file-finding command. It's fast. It's convenient. It's always correct. It's more reliable than Kreskin's crystal. It's the Search command.

Finding the Search command

It's not difficult to find the impressive Windows Search command. No, what's difficult is trying not to find it! There are Search text boxes just about everywhere: at the top right of each folder window, at the bottom of the Start menu, in the Windows Mail program, and on and on.

The Search command works simply: Type the text you're searching for. It can be part of a filename or a text tidbit inside a file or an e-mail message. Press the Enter key and you see results, similar to what's shown in Figure 9-1.

Figure 9.1. The Search Results ...