winXP: windows desktop search?

[black_b[ ]x]

I'm running XP pro SP3 on my work computer and installed windows desktop search so I could search emails thru Outlook and also a large number of files on a network share. It took a long time to index (not surprising, 29,000 files, lots of word documents) but now that its done, it seems to want to re-index every time I log in, or once every 24 hours or something. Is this normal? it kicks the crap out of my system when its doing this. I'm also using Symantec Endpoint Protection (SBS edition) so maybe the combination of those is whats sucking the power so much.

PC is a dell with E2180 dual core @ 2.0GHz and 2GB of ram.

I'd really like to index the word files on the network, is Google desktop a better alternative for this?

 

[Azhar]

Google Desktop Search works the same way as the Microsoft counterparts and is no better. I've installed Copernic in place of WDS on a few employee's computers and it works quite well.

http://www.copernic.com/

I use Window's variation myself as I have not had any problems with it. You might want to try WDS 4.0 which isn't in WindowsUpdate as far as I know. That version seems to fix some problems some employees have been having.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940157

 

[anime4u]

I consider Google desktop search spyware trash. I really hate it. I have not heard bad things about microsoft desktop search but since it is yet another program that loads up windows, please proceed with caution since it takes away available resources.

 

[black_b[ ]x]

Thanks for the WDS 4.0 link. the install program did an automatic restart and closed what i was working on, and also destroyed my previous index Maybe I'll try copying the network share files I want indexed onto my local hard drive, hopefully it'll be able to index faster that way.

I don't see why it has to index every day, I'm wondering if the backup software is flagging the files when it runs (1+ per day) and thats what makes the search tool have to re-index all the time? the content within the vast majority of the files is not changing.