Windows hard disk search

[Bill Vlahos]

Mike,

Thanks. I can narrow it down. This is very helpful.

Bill Vlahos

On May 11, 2011, at 3:11 PM, Mike Bonner wrote:

> If you can narrow down the places to search, you can do this with a shell
> command.  You could technically do the whole drive, but it would be way too
> slow to be worthwhile, but if you only have to search a small subset of the
> drive it shouldn't be too bad.
> 
> set the defaultfolder to "c:\where\to\start\looking"
> get shell("dir /s filetofind.pref")
> 
> So to find all hosts files in the windows tree
> 
> set the defaultfolder to "c:\windows"
> get shell("dir /s hosts")
> 
> which returns parsable info as similar to the following.
> 
> * Volume in drive C has no label.*
> * Volume Serial Number is C44E-B22E*
> *
> *
> * Directory of
> c:\windows\winsxs\amd64_microsoft-windows-w..nfrastructure-other_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7600.16385_none_6079f415110c0210
> *
> *
> *
> *06/10/2009  03:00 PM               824 hosts*
> *               1 File(s)            824 bytes*
> *
> *
> *     Total Files Listed:*
> *               1 File(s)            824 bytes*
> *               0 Dir(s)  858,688,282,624 bytes free*
> 
> 
> A whole drive search with this method takes way too long.  I also wonder if
> there is a registry key that will point you the right direction instead.
> 
> On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 3:51 PM, Bob Sneidar <bobs at twft.com> wrote:
> 
>> I wouldn't try to search for it if I were you. Just check for the OS and
>> conditionally set the path accordingly. If it could be ANYWHERE, than that
>> begs the question, what is it and who put it there?
>> 
>> Bob
>> 
>> 
>> On May 11, 2011, at 2:14 PM, Bill Vlahos wrote:
>> 
>>> I want to modify a prefs file on XP and Windows 7 computers. Since the
>> file could be in different places I can't count on knowing the path to it.
>> How do I execute a search for the file by name in LC and get the path to it?
>>> 
>>> The file would only be on the user's hard disk not on any mounted servers
>> so I want to restrict the search to just the user's drive.
>>> 
>>> Bill Vlahos
>>> 
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