One In a Million

My computer has over 1,000,000 files. Most of them have been generated by the computer itself, but some of them I wrote or edited. How does one find a part in a wrecking yard that size?

After trying a number of programs that claimed to find local files, I have settled on Yahoo Desktop Search. After it is first installed, it needs to index everything in sight and on site. (File types can be excluded.) The interface is not elegant, but it works. And it's free.

I have shut off the indexing service that belongs to Windows. It was never ready. Other external indexing programs have been removed. Now, when I need to search, I can find files in a few seconds, either by name, or file type or even by special words within the file. Yes, Desktop Search can find one in a million.

One added point, Yahoo Desktop Search does not live peaceably with other programs, so it is not kept running in the background. When I need it, I load it. After use, it gets unloaded unless it is time to index more files.