Desktop Search Beta Bug Reports

These were bug reports for the previous beta of Desktop Search. You can download the latest version of Desktop Search from http://desktop.msn.com

CSV IFilter always failing

DS is not able to index the content of CSV files because the CSV IFilter (offfile.dll or offfilt.dll) fails to initialize. FiltDump returns "Error 0x80041703 loading IFilter". Calling the IFilter::Init returns E_INVALIDARG, whatever the parameters passed.

Incorrect url when using 'Open Containing Folder' on items indexing with custom protocol handler

When selecting 'Open Containing Folder' from the context menu of an item, the 5 first characters of its url seems to be removed (probably assuming the url here always starts with 'file:'). But if the item has been indexing by a custom protocol handler, the url is then wrong, as the 5 first characters are missing.
For example, if the url of an item is 'mycustomph://folder/item', DS will try to open the url 'tomph:\\folder\' when selecting 'Open Containing Folder'.
(Note: using 'Open' to open the item itself, gives the correct url and work as expected)

Outlook Express not detected correclty

On some installation (where Outlook Express is installed), in the 'Select Locations to index', under 'My Email', the Outlook Express option is displayed in gray with the text "Outlook Express - Not installed on your computer." Why? In the registry, outlookexpress\HasRequirements is 0x80041213.

Cannot open e-mail items from result list after adding PST files

The following happened to both my colleague and me, with the following configuration:

Windows 2000 SP4 (fully updated)
Outlook 2002 SP3 (fully updated)
Accessing an Exchange server over a VPN
MSN Desktop Search Version 02.00.0001.1203

Initially, we indexed hard disk and the e-mail on the exchange server, and one PST file that was opened in Outlook. Everything worked fine after the initial building of the index. After that, we opened four more PST files in Outlook. These were indexed as well. When doing a search, all e-mails could also still be found. However, it was not possible to open an e-mail from the search result list directly; Desktop Search says that the item has been moved or deleted. This is not true - the item is still at the same place as before. My (completely unfounded) hypothesis is that Outlook's internal naming or numbering of the PST files and the mailbox on the exchange server changes when PST files are opened. -- mdietrich, 14.3.2005

Deleted files cached in search results

Search for a file, see the list of search results, delete something (it gets a nice "deleted" icon overlay) research for the same thing, and the result is back! Trying to open the deleted file does not do anything.

This happens when MSN Desktop Search hasn't had a chance to update its index after you delete a file.

Can't it remove the file from the cache when the file is deleted? It does monitor the deletion, though needs to do more than show an icon (or remember to show the icon next time too).

Dropdown search box appears on wrong monitor

When the task bar is not in the primary monitor, the popup search results window thingie still comes up in the primary monitor. It should alays some up in the SAME monitor as the search text box.

IE, Explorer Program Crashes

I've had numerous cases of IE crashing, or Explorer crashing, when the Deskbar/Toolbar is active. If I disable it, no crashes. Also, when I try and exit IE with it in, it sends a message telling me IE has undergone an error and needs to close... twice. Even though I already closed it via the "x". It's not especially debilitating, but it's damn annoying.

Update: We've fixed a lot of crashing bugs with build 1203! Try it out and let us know if you still see a lot of crashes... -bubba

IE Toolbar footprint

I've noticed that having the IE toolbar active reduces the number of active IE windows I can have open from around 45 to 20. After 20 any new windows either refuse to open, or open with no toolbars and no menu. Whilst I realise that having >20 windows open is unusual, it's a bit annoying. - blowdart

Update: Build 1203 uses a smaller memory footprint, so you should be able to open more IE windows... though I haven't tested this. ;-) -bubba

IFilter is not called for JPG Files

IFilters for JPG files are not called. -- mvo

Details: see this newsgroup thread_thread/thread/b9ea65cc301970ec/953017650ff95351#953017650ff95351

Please correct me if I'm wrong but it would appear to me that the first solution proposed in this newsgroup thread is too invasive. It would in fact mean that html files will not be indexed! I've tried solution 2) and as far as I can see, it doesn't work.

eamonn

IFilter is not stopped when indexing is snoozed

If an IFilter is running on a large file and you snooze the indexing I would suggest that the IFilter process was killed imediately to release the CPU. - JTB

IMAP accounts "unexpectedly closed due to another application accessing it"

I first reported this during the non-public beta, it was acknowledged as a bug, and it is a complete show stopper for me. I use IMAP mail at work and Outlook repeatedly reports that one of my primamry IMAP accounts "unexpectedly closed due to another application accessing it". This is verified and repeatable only with the MSN Toolbar Suite and Indexer running. None of your competitors have this problem (I have been testing Copernic and the new X1 beta). Please add this to the "hot list".

I'm seeing this too -- blowdart

This is a huge issue for me - still! I just posted about it again in the newsgroup This is particularly frustrating because there has been at least one updated build of Desktop Search since this issue was raised and I have yet to see Microsoft respond in a way that indicates they even acknowledge it as a problem. -- rayd

IMAP alert problems

More IMAP joy. In Outlook 2003 it's possible (barely) to get delivert alerts working with IMAP accounts. Since installing the search toolbar alerts randomly appear with an error message complaining it cannot find the message the alert was for. - blowdart

IMAP duplicity

I've seen this on 2 machines, and heard about someone else having it on the mailing lists for my mail server. Basically at times Outlook will sometimes create 2 email "entries" for a single email, pulled down via IMAP. This has only started happening since MSN search was installed, and goes away once it's un-installed. I have the feeling that this happens if mails are being pushed down as search is indexing.

OK, it's definitely MSN Search. When I see duplicate headers I can login to web mail (or look at the mail server file system) and lo, there's only one message. The message ID from the headers matches on the duplicate mails (as I guess you would expect), further showing they're duplicates and something is going wrong in Outlook. If you attempt to delete them the greying and score through does not happen in the Outlook UI, but they appear to be marked for deletion on the IMAP server as a purge will then delete the message(s). - blowdart

It's not just MSN Toolbar that does this. Copernic displays this same problem with IMAP and so does the X1 beta (but on a much less frequent basis). It does appear to be a conflict between active indexing and a mail "pull" from the IMAP server happening simultaneously. - mochant

Lookout never did this and I used it religiously for ages before switching over to MSNDS...but yeah, the brief awful time I used Copernic, it did it as well. Eventually it corrects itself in MSN Desktop Search though. -rascally

A side-effect of this is that Oulook rules set to move an affected message end up copying the message instead.

Indexer Dialog Title and '...'s

I have noticed that when you first start up your machine, then go to the Indexer on the toolbar and click index status, that the dialog is displayed saying 'N Indexing Status' instead of 'MSN Indexing Status' that it says when the indexing is working.

Also in that dialog, when it is starting up there seems to be way too many '...''s, eg 'Indexing is starting, please wait ...' then directly underneath is another '...'

Not found anything else so far... but damn I love this software!! --alexb

Update: We've improved the status information dialog in build 1203, but still have more work to do!

Info window is not resizable

The info window -- The one with "Desktop Items" and "Web Items" -- is too tall for my 720 x 480 desktop (it's a TV PC). It's also not resizable, so I ended up switching the resolution, set the window to minimize mode & could never use it.

Multiple open windows

If I have the "open each folder in its own window" option selected for explorer (in Tools->Folder Options), whenever I type a query in the MSN Desktop Search Results explorer window, I get a new window, rather than the expected searching in the current window (which happens if the "open in same window" option is selected). Likewise, if I click one of the Desktop, Files, Outlook, Outlook Express "tabs" at the top of this window, a new search window is opened, and also when clicking any of the "Show:" filters. -- Matt

Options dialog box hangs when laptop running on battery

Close DS (right click the taskbar icon and select Exit)
Disconnect the power cable so the laptop is running on battery
Restart DS
Make sure the indexing status is idle (not 'Indexing is paused because you are on battery power')
Right click the DS icon in the taskbar and select 'Indexing Options'
Select 'Desktop Search' in the tree view of the MSN Toolbar Suite Options dialog box
Make some modification to the 'Search locations'
Click OK
The dialog box hangs
Plug back the power cable
The dialog box unfreezes and closes itself

Outlook PST files not released

I cannot find a way to backup my PST files with MSN Desktop Search running. The PST files seem to remain locked by explorer.exe even after exiting the MSN Desktop Search taskbar icon. Is this a bug?

Outlook 2000 crashes

Build 1203 of the Toolbar causes Outlook 2000 to crash every time I close it. With build 1180, Outlook did not crash. I had to remove (or rename) this registry key to work around the crash:

		 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\Addins\MSNToolbarOutlook.Connect

My setup: Windows XP SP2 with all updates, Office 2000 with all updates, Internet Mail mode (so, I don't miss the Outlook add-in because Desktop Search was not indexing my mail anyway.)

Outlook 2000 won't shut down

I use Outlook 2000 IME (and Lookout 1.2 because the MSN Search didn't/doesn't index that configuration of Outlook 2000). With the 2.00.0001.1203 refresh (thanks for all the IFilters), I have a new situation. Outlook doesn't really close any more. Instead, any unanswered reminders stay in existence (though I can't open the related document -- nothing happens). I can get the reminders to close by logging off or using the Task Manager to close one or two. If I reopen Outlook without doing that, I get a new set of reminders and a warning from NewsGator that Outlook and NewsGator are already running. And if I look in Task Manager, there will be two Outlook.exe processes. -- orcmid at 2005-02-06T23:18Z

My workaround is to remove MSN Search from my Outlook 2000 machines until I upgrade them to Outlook 2003. I have confirmed that everything works great on Outlook 2003. added 2005-02-07T00:50Z yup, removing the MSN Toolbar Suite 2.0 did the trick, and things are starting up a little zippier now too - at 266MHz, my laptop is a little underpowered for all of this background activity. PS: When I asked to see the preview of this page, it showed me the top page of this part of the wiki, not this page on bug reports.

Password-fill dialog box obstrusive, doesn't disappear when navigating away

If the user doesn't respond to it, the password-fill dialog box doesn't disappear when navigating away from the page that triggered it. Also, the box is obstrusive and should be changed to something less disturbing (maybe an info bar.)

Rebuild index doesn't do anything if MSNIndex.exe and msnlAdmin.exe are closed

1 Right click the DS taskbar icon and select Indexing Options

Wait for the MSN Toolbar Suite Options dialog box to open
Close DS by right clicking the DS taskbar icon and selecting Exit
Go to the 'Desktop Search' option in the treeview of the MSN Toolbar Suite Options dialog box
Click on the 'Rebuild Index' button
DS taskbar icon gets restarted a few seconds after pressing 'Rebuild Index'
The indexing seems to start but quickly says 'Indexing Idle' and the index hasn't been rebuild at all

Results window jumps around when taskbar on autohide

When the task bar is on autohide:

click the search box
enter a search term
grab your mouse, and move it over the item you want
click on the wrong one becuse the list has jumped down 15 px.

Would be nice if the list didn't move, would look best if the task bar didn't autohide while the search box has focus and the mouse is inside the results list. Exactly how the start menu works please :)

Search doesn't start automatically

I would love the search to start up automatically. Several times now I have tried to do a search only to be told that Desktop Search isn't running and that I should go to the start menu and start it. This thing is so cool and useful it should be started by default. I know I can probably stick it in the startup folder, but having it kick off automatically without doing that would be good. -- Alexb

When I installed Desktop Search, it added itself to the "All Users" startup folder. Maybe you stumbled on a bug during installation. -- Catatonic

TIF file indexing (SOLVED)

I'm scanning many of my documents as tif-files with Microsoft Office Document Imaging including OCR-info in the tif-file. MSPaper includes an IFilter (mspfilt.dll) to read the OCR-info from the tif-files. Something seems to go wrong. I can't find any tif-file by OCR-text and not even by filename. The search string *.tif just returns "Nothing found in desktop for query *.tif". Any other file extension works well. I have seen in the GatherLogs that the tif-files are searched and I have seen in filemon that MSNGather loads the mspfilt.dll and the tif-files. I have seen this on another computer work well. To check the mspfilt.dll I wrote a small test programm using the dll to get the OCR-text out of the tif-files what also did well. Is there anything else I can try to find the problem? - jirzi

I have installed the IFilter Explorer from citeknet. It says that the Desktop search searches for *.tif-files using the mspfilt.dll. I have ceated a new catalogue in the indexing services snap in of the management console and have the directory with the tif-files indexed. The search of the snap can find tif files by name and by OCR content. I have rebuilt the index of the destop search but MSN Desktop Search still doesn't find any tif-files. - jirzi

Jirzi, I don't know if this will be of some assistance, anyway I thought it would cost nothing to try (if you haven't tried it before, of course). Playing a lot with IFilters on development computers, I managed to screw many times something in DS. Most of the time rebuilding the index wasn't enough and I had to uninstall and reinstall DS to finally have to proper search result again. Ben (Citeknet)

Thank you Ben, I tried uninstall and reinstall but there are still no tif-files found. I found out that zipping tif-files helps because your zip-iFilter works fine :-) - jirzi

I've installed the latest version of MSN Destop Search on Feb, 13.. Today I realized it finds tif-files including its OCR-info. Yippie :-) jirzi

WindowBlinds incompatibilites

The search windows seem to go haywire when WindowBlinds is loaded. -- ProgramCSharp

From the debugging we've done on this it seems to be a problem with WindowBlinds that our code unearths. We'd love it if someone over at WindowBlinds looked into it a bit and I believe we've sent them email. dave

The Stardock.windowblinds newsgroup confirms they are working on the issue (and were indeed contacted by MS!). Work-arounds include (1) excluding skinning of Explorer and IE; (2) set User Overrides to always use the blue shellstyles not always effective; (3) use a different (older) skin that doesn't rely on new features; (4) wait till January for release 4.5. They also say that releases 4.3 and earlier don't have the problem. - lance

4.5 is out - did it fix the problem?

Various Unknown Problems

These all seem to be one-off occurrences for particular users, rather than systemic bugs

Contacts not being indexed

I installed the newest version. I select my files and I have all of C:\ indexed and have OL checked (I have OL 2003). After indexing is done, I don't have any contacts indexed. - cause

Emails not being indexed

Running Outlook 2003, against an Exchange server. The index is built against all desktop files (and even indexes selected locations) but does not index my emails. Any work arounds?

No search results at all

Installed a fresh copy of Windows Xp, with Service Pack 2 Slipstreamed. Installed MSN Toolbar Suite 2.1.1203 (the new version). Indexing completed after about 2 hours (with 50,000+ items indexed). However any search in the deskbar returns 'No items found'. The main Desktop Search window refuses to open, no matter where I open it from, whether its the taskbar icon, the deskbar, the start menu, or any of the toolbars.

Tried uninstalling, and reinstalling the Desktop Search 4 times, with restarts in between, yet still no luck. This is the latest bug I've found, and it's one that has completely crippled the tool for me. Anyone expereinced this?

Search engine freezing

For some reason the index engine keeps freezing when I restart my PC. I cant search for any files

Searching for rivera

Searching for rivera, riverad or the like results in finding all indexed files even though I know this word doesn't exist in these files. Why is it so? - JTB

System Resets

I seem to have a problem with MSN Desktop Search. But it's one of those problems that you can't exactly pinpoint where and who causes it. So, let's take it step by step. The problem is that from time to time my computer just resets and boots back up then shows the Windows Recovered from a serious error and after I send the error report it opens a IE window saying that it's a vendor specific problem and gives me a code and says that the CPU had a unrecoverable error. These are the symptoms. Now let's see what makes me belive that the cause is MSN Desktop Search.
Before installing the beta I never had this problem. The problem seems to start right after I installed the Toolbar. After runing some time with it I had a scheduled format and reinstall of Windows XP SP2. So I did that and installed back the beta of the Toolbar (yes, I fell in love with it). And soon I had another reset. Now I'm on the 8th day after the format. In the first few days I had a reset around every hour. After some time (a day) the resets got few and fewer until now I might go 2 days without any reset. I believe that it might be that the indexing process is finished and it doesn't have any thing to index anymore so it does not cause problems. That is if I am right guessing that the cause is the Desktop Search. Well, after 3-4 days of problems I got mad and guessed that probably the indexing process found a file that was corrupted or some problems with the file system (NTFS) so I scheduled a complete scandisk (error scan) at the next reboot. It found a few problems one of them being my first bad sector(s) (too bad.. it was a new HDD) and I figured that now the problem was fixed. But in the same evening I had a Norton Antivirus 2005 full disk scan that begun and somewhere at the half of the process the system shows the now usual problem: yes, the system reset again.
Well, now we get to to today when I finally got totally sick of this and decided to find the problem. So I started the Norton scan again and watched it close to see where it stopped. It stopped somewhere between some RAR files. It seems that Norton also scans the contents of RAR files. Well after the reboot I watched more closely to see where exactly the problem was. I figured that it was supposed the stop on the file that created the problem to the indexing as well. So I found a RAR that created another reset with Norton so I moved that file to an external HDD. Scanned again the whole D drive (where the file was located) and got another reset again between some RARs. Moved some of them to another partition and the next time I didn't get a reset. On another scan, another reset. Now, I closed all programs that where resident in the memory (most important of them is MSN Indexing and the Deskbar) did a scan and now I didn't get a reset. Powered the bar and the Indexer up and did another scan. Still no reset. Next I did another full scan with the bar and Indexer up and running and no reset.
This was getting weird so I decided to restart and leave all applications as usual. I started the full Norton antivirus scan (again) and got the reset. Looks like after close and restart of the indexer it didn't reset but when starting up as usual I have the reset. It seems like the problem is not fixed but I don't have any other test then the Norton scan (before I had a reset almost everytime it ran - read above) even though before it reset in other cases as well but none specific or anything to do to trigger it. Here is the link to the page that apeared after the last reset and Error reporting:
http://oca.microsoft.com/en/response.aspx?SGD=d65e2fd4-813d-42fe-abac-9d8a4d1648d2&SID=134

		 A hardware failure reported by your Central Processing Unit (CPU)
		 Error Message: STOP: 0x0000009C (0x00000004, 0x00000000, 0xb2000000, 0x00020151)

Thanks for your time -- Eric

I'm skeptical that MSN Desktop Search is causing unrecoverable hardware errors in your PC all on its own. From your description it seems to be occurring in combination with Norton Antivirus and (possibly) some hard disk problems. One hypothesis is that when Desktop Search indexes those RAR files, Norton Antivirus kicks in (to make sure that the files aren't infected with a virus), and that's what causes a system reset. To test this you could disable Norton Antivirus for a day and see if resets still occur (needless to say, don't do this if you're not confident that you can avoid viruses that day through other methods, e.g. not opening attachments, having a good firewall, etc). -- JonathanHardwick

I just tried something else now: I closed the MSN Indexing (right click on the Magnifier in the Bar at the bottom and >Close) and also right click on the Bar> Toolbars and uncheck MSN Deskbar. Then started the Norton Antivirus 2005 (since that's the only way that I can recreate the problem; the problem also hapens many other times but I couldn't find out how to recreate other of them) and did a full search and after some time it restarted (even with Indexing closed). I don't know if the way I closed the Idexing is all I have to do? Or I have to close something else too. I will close Norton for some time but since without Norton there is no other way to recreate the problem and right before this weekend I had the computer not reset for almost 2 days then Norton autostarted and I had a restart but who knows if it would have restarted otherwise. SO there is no sure way to know if Norton is the problem when disableing it. :::I just remembered a place where I had another reboot (I don't know if it's caused by what I was doing at the moment but it's an example): I was installing an aplication for 2 ISOs (Adobe Creative Suite) and at the end of the first CD it reset. Actualy this is the reason that made be try to figure out what the problem is. Any idea? Does my last test mean that it's not caused by MSN Index in any way? At the lest test after sending the roblem to microsoft I got the same error code as above. Give me some idea what might be causing this. -rX (Eric)

Again, I was just installing Creative Suite again and the computer was IDLE waiting for me to insrt the 2nd ISO and it just Reset again (same error report - can't anyone analyse the dump that is sent to Microsoft?).. THE COMPUTER WAS IDLE. I am going to close NORTON now but I don't know how to close MDN Indexing so it's closed for good and does not start. And I will try to install Creative SUite again. -rX

I get the random reboot as well. Only when MSN Desktop Search is active...same stuff that seems to happen to rX. Not too often though, thank goodness. Sometimes I'm afraid to index though. -rascally

I installed it yesterday, and during the indexing my computer resets. I tried closing ALL the applications (steam, norton av, zone alarm,) but still I have the reset problem. I tried also checking motherboard info's (may be a temperature problem?) and everything was fine, except.. during the indexing the computer resets. I unistalled yesterday night MSN desktop and my computer is still up and runnging! (XP SP2 all updates done)

I just did a clean reinstall of everything, and yet again, MSN Desktop Search randomly reboots. Are you guys going to acknowledge this is a problem? There's people in the newsgroup who are having this issue too, so sweeping it under the carpet isn't going to help your product any. -rascally

No search results for me either

Windows XP, with Service Pack 2. MSN Toolbar Suite 1203 build. Indexing completed with over 23,000 items indexed (Outlook and My Documents). However any search in the deskbar or the Desktop Search window returns 'No items found'. I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling a couple of times with no success. I have LookOut installed with Outlook and that works fine. In the past I have used Copernic Desktop Search, now removed - again no problems. Anyone? - Mike Charnock

MSNGather

The MSNGather.exe file has been running wild on my computer lately and taking 100% CPU. I have left it for hours and it just does not stop whatever it's doing.

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