istartedsomething

With great power comes great responsibility. Windows Vista comes with an amazingly powerful search engine that finds your documents, photos, music, movies, emails, applications and even sensitive materials in milliseconds. Some documents are never meant to be found, such as private collections of Steve Jobs keynotes, Laura Foy videos or even my secret stash of Tux penguinography. But with such a powerful search engine, how will you protect your innocence in Windows Vista? Here’s a few tips.

Exclude from Search Indexer

Tackling the problem from the soul of the searching beast. By excluding folders from the search indexer, you will permanently remove any existing indexes on that folder and prevent any future indexes inside that folder. This is recommended for permanent collections that don’t move around.

1. Launch the “Indexing Options” dialog by clicking the Start pearl and search for “index options”
2. Click the “Modify” button.
3. Click the “Show all locations” button, agree to UAC prompt.
4. Expand the “Change selected locations” tree at the top. Find your appropriate inappropriate folders.
   For example: D:\Users\Long\Pictures\Tux Collection
5. Untick the folder(s) you wish to exclude from search.
6. Verify your folders have been excluded in the summary below.
7. Close appropriate dialogs.

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