Why have my searches stopped working?

QMy Windows 10 PC recently applied the Fall Creators Update (FCU). I watched as it did this, and saw it crash midway through. Windows said that it would recover itself, which it duly did. My PC seems to be running okay, but since this event when I execute a search in a File Explorer window it doesn’t seem to find what I want. All I get is the message ‘No items match your search’. Previously, I could type a word or phrase I knew to be in a particular document and that document would appear in the results list right away. Oddly, searches still work on my C drive, but not on drive D or E, where I respectively keep my photos and documents. Could this have been caused by the crash I witnessed? And do you know how to get my searches working again? Kev Concannon

AIt sounds like the index File Explorer uses for searches has either been disabled or has been corrupted, which could indeed have been the result of the crash during the FCU update. Re-enabling or rebuilding the index will fix this.

First, click Start, type index then click Indexing Options. If your D and E drives are listed under the Included Locations heading, then the index is most likely corrupt. To fix this, click the Advanced button and then, in the Troubleshooting section, click Rebuild (see screenshot) followed by OK to confirm.

If the drives aren’t listed then you need to re-add them to the index. Click Modify and then, under ‘Change selected locations’, tick both drive D and E, and then click OK.