How in the Tech

Disabling Windows 7′s integrated search

By Adam Myers ⋅ June 2, 2010 ⋅ Tags: Annoyances, Windows 7

Desktop searching has been available in Windows since it’s infancy but it’s functionality and feature set has improved immensely, unsurprisingly. One of the biggest leaps in the Windows search space came with the introduction of Vista – the search process would index specified directory locations in the background which greatly improved the response time when a search was initiated by the user. Windows 7 took this process and applied some spit and polish, like most things in 7, resulting in a much improved user experience. However, Microsoft’s desktop search is only one of many such services available to Windows and if for some reason you wish to use another, or even disable the built-in indexer completely, it’s a relatively easy task to undertake.

Click on Start and then Control Panel.

Inside Control Panel choose Programs->Uninstall a program.

From the left-hand panel click Turn Windows features on or off.

In the Windows Features dialog scroll down until you find Windows Search.

Uncheck the box and confirm the change by clicking Yes from the warning popup. Finally, click OK.

Windows will apply your configuration change, presenting a progress window  before finally requiring you to reboot to finalize the process.

After a reboot you will notice that the Search box is missing from both the Start Menu and Windows Explorer. If you wish to re-enable the search functionality built into Windows 7 repeat the steps above and instead check the box next to Windows Search.