Tweak the XP Search Option

I find using Visual Studio’s “Search in Files” option more reliable than using the XP Search option.  This may be why:
“…soon discovered that the standard XP search option will only search files that are registered as being text files. All other files are simply ignored when you try to search for text in a file.

Fortunately, I also found the solution to my problem. The registry contains a setting which you can use to override this standard behavior.

 

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ContentIndex]

"FilterFilesWithUnknownExtensions"=dword:00000001

Changing the setting to the above value will search all files for the text you enter. You can of course use RegEdit to do this, or download this registry patch to change this setting.

More registry tweaks can be found here.”
[via Jan’s post]