Increasing the speed of Windows Search indexer by updating to version 4.0

Windows Search 4.0 includes the following improvements:

• Support for indexing encrypted documents of local file systems
• Reduced affect on Microsoft Exchange when you index e-mail in online mode, and there is no local cache (.ost)
• Support for indexing online delegate mailboxes
• Support for client-to-client remote query to shared indexed locations
• Improved indexing performance
• Faster previewer updates for Windows XP
• Per-user Group Policy settings
• Windows software updates for Watson errors
• Support for the following new enterprise Group Policy objects.

[Download]

Sidebar Gadget to monitor and control the Windows Search indexer

Information from the author, Brandon Paddock:

Features

• Monitor the current state of the indexer
• See how many items need to be processed
• View the total count of indexed items
• Stop and start the indexing service
• Open the Indexing Options control panel
• View the installed Windows Search version number
• Multiple backgrounds / color combinations

[Download]

[IFilter] Indexing contents of RAR files

I'm using this RAR IFilter from the IFilterShop.com (free for non-commercial users) and my RAR files are now indexed including the contents.

They also offer interesting IFilters for ASPX, CHM, MSG, MS Project, Mind Manager, and many more other file types.

Note from the readme file:

In Vista Windows Search and Windows Desktop Search you need to configure a custom temporary directory:

1. Open registry key "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\IFilterShop\RarFilter"
2. Add new String value named "TempPath" and enter the full path to the new temporary directory
3. Restart Indexing Service