



If this slow Windows 10 search issue affects you, follow these simple instructions below to easily fix it. Some locations which need to be indexed were missing from the search index. That's exactly what was happening in this case after upgrading the Windows 10 build. When you search for some folder or file which is not located in an indexed location, the search is slower by several orders of magnitude. So, instead of performing a real-time search through files on the filesystem, the search performs a query to the internal database, which allows showing results immediately.

There is a designated list of indexed locations in Windows, plus Libraries which are always indexed. It runs as a service that indexes file names, contents and properties of file system items and stores them in a special database. It is not new to Windows 10, but Windows 10 uses the same indexer-powered search like its predecessors although it uses a different algorithm and a different database. As you may be already know, search results in Windows are instant because they are powered by the Windows Search indexer.
