I am looking for some utility that will do a disk file search, like the Windows offered search engine, but with the ability to select specific directories or subdirectories.

The problem I find with the Windows Search applet is that it wants to look at the entire disk for files containing certain phrases or words, like, say, "Superwin".  I know where those files would be, but that subdirectory contains about 1000 files.  Windows search would find it, sure, but it would take a lot longer because its going to search the entire disk, or large chunks of the disk that it doesn't need to search.

Any suggestions?  I have done some looking on the Web but I have not found anything that really answers my need.  Freeware would be nice, but if it has to be shareware, so be it.

   Windows Search does not have to search through the whole drive if you do not want it to.  In the "Look in:" dropdown box go down to the very bottom of the list and select Browse....  That will allow you to select a folder to confine the search to.

I have the same problem as Outpost.  Windows' options effectively limit me to searching either a specific directory or hard drive, or all hard drives.  I'd like to be able to limit a search to, for example, two specific drives, or three directories.  Surely there's a utility that does that.  --John

I use freeware programme Super Finder ( http://freesoftland.sytes.net/ssearch.html ).

There are two excellent file search utilities put out by Mythicsoft, very user configurable.  Agent Ransack is freeware and more than sufficient for most tasks.  A more powerful program, FileLocator Pro, will search almost anything.  I was made aware of Agent Ransack some years ago by an excellent review it got in PC World.

There's also even a "lite," free version of FileLocator.  This company does only the couple of search products, but what they do, they do well.  (No, I have no interest in or connection to them.)

Mythicsoft's site is at http://www.mythicsoft.com/.

- David
dbrooks@vertgame.com