On Windows Vista and every subsequent version of Windows, if I search for a file and include the entire C:\ drive, I might very well have time to make tea or a sandwich while the search results come in. On Windows XP, using the search dialog with the animated dog, I can search the entire C:\ drive and expect it to be done in a minute or two, if not in seconds.
It can’t just be nostalgia; I can replicate these results on period-accurate hardware today. What changed with Vista to make file searching so much slower, even with indexing enabled?
Just get Everything Search and you’ll be able to search just as fast as you could in XP, and with no Bing spam messing up the results.
Funny¹ thing is that Everything (and similar programs like WizTree) can be that be that fast because Microsoft’s own NTFS file system has a built in file index, which is what Windows Search used back in XP; the search programs practically don’t have to do any work, NTFS has already done it for them.
Of course, though, that’ll give you the results you want, not the results Microsoft wants, which explains the change in later further enshittified versions of Windows.
1.– And by funny I mean not funny at all. Sad, in fact. Tragic, even, maybe.