How in the Tech

Bringing Back “Search…” Menu Item After Vista SP1

By Adam Myers ⋅ September 29, 2008 ⋅ Tags: Customization, Vista

Because of fears on appearing anti-competitive Microsoft chose to introduce a few visual access points to Vista’s built in search in Service Pack 1. Companies such as Google felt that Microsoft’s built in search was too prominently pushed on the unaware users, who would want to use applications like Google Desktop for their local search. In an attempt to prevent any legal action, Microsoft removed search from the Vista Start Menu and the right click context menu for folders. It is this second removal that caused me the most grief as I use right click folder search quite frequently. Here’s how to easily restore the menu item using the Windows Registry Editor.

1. Click Start and in the Start Search box type regedit.exe
2. Traverse the Registry Editor navigation tree on the left hand side down to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\find



3. Locate the LegacyDisable key on the right panel. Having this key defined determines whether Search… appears when you right click on a folder. So, either delete LegacyDisable completely, or at the very least rename it – should you want to easily return to the default behavior.

Now returning to the folder and right clicking should reveal the Search… just like Vista pre Service Pack 1.