Searching through Windows...

Hey folks! Back with some of the old Windows OSes, if I wanted to find all
my temporary files, all I had to do was open up my C: drive and search for
"*.tmp"

I've tried doing this in Windows 7 Pro, but it says it's not finding
anything, which I find completely hard to believe, of course.

Has anything changed, or should we not still be able to do wildcard-type
searches?

Any help gratefully accepted. Thanks!

Carmen

Start, open the "run"box type %temp% hit enter and see how many you have

"Carmen Gauvin-O'Donnell" <> wrote in message
news:...
> Hey folks! Back with some of the old Windows OSes, if I wanted to find all
> my temporary files, all I had to do was open up my C: drive and search for
> "*.tmp"
>
> I've tried doing this in Windows 7 Pro, but it says it's not finding
> anything, which I find completely hard to believe, of course.
>
> Has anything changed, or should we not still be able to do wildcard-type
> searches?
>
> Any help gratefully accepted. Thanks!
>
> Carmen

Ah... thank you Sir! That certainly does the trick...

That having been said, where would I have found such a "string" out? What
are the other strings that are useful for finding "not the usual suspects"
in Windows?

C.

"Drew" <> wrote in message
news:...
> Start, open the "run"box type %temp% hit enter and see how many you have
>
> "Carmen Gauvin-O'Donnell" <> wrote in message
> news:...
>> Hey folks! Back with some of the old Windows OSes, if I wanted to find
>> all my temporary files, all I had to do was open up my C: drive and
>> search for "*.tmp"
>>
>> I've tried doing this in Windows 7 Pro, but it says it's not finding
>> anything, which I find completely hard to believe, of course.
>>
>> Has anything changed, or should we not still be able to do wildcard-type
>> searches?
>>
>> Any help gratefully accepted. Thanks!
>>
>> Carmen
>

You can still do what you are used to doing, but the issue becomes one of
location. Windows hasn't changed the commands, but it has changed the
location, creating the issue. So, if you open a command window (CMD), it
will put you in your home directory. From there, your temp files are
undoubtedly buried several layers down in a normally hidden directory. So
you won't see them with a simple "dir *.tmp". But if you add a "/s" to that
dir command, you'll see a bunch of files. The /s tells dir to also look in
subdirectories of the current directory.

Using the %temp% variable, as Carmen suggested, gets around the issue
searching in the directory where windows puts temporary files by default.

--
Charlie.
http://msmvps.com/blogs/russel




"Carmen Gauvin-O'Donnell" <> wrote in message
news:8E75D652-EE16-4619-A4D0-...
> Ah... thank you Sir! That certainly does the trick...
>
> That having been said, where would I have found such a "string" out? What
> are the other strings that are useful for finding "not the usual suspects"
> in Windows?
>
> C.
>
> "Drew" <> wrote in message
> news:...
>> Start, open the "run"box type %temp% hit enter and see how many you have
>>
>> "Carmen Gauvin-O'Donnell" <> wrote in message
>> news:...
>>> Hey folks! Back with some of the old Windows OSes, if I wanted to find
>>> all my temporary files, all I had to do was open up my C: drive and
>>> search for "*.tmp"
>>>
>>> I've tried doing this in Windows 7 Pro, but it says it's not finding
>>> anything, which I find completely hard to believe, of course.
>>>
>>> Has anything changed, or should we not still be able to do wildcard-type
>>> searches?
>>>
>>> Any help gratefully accepted. Thanks!
>>>
>>> Carmen
>>

"Carmen Gauvin-O'Donnell" <> wrote in message
news:...
> Hey folks! Back with some of the old Windows OSes, if I wanted to find all
> my temporary files, all I had to do was open up my C: drive and search for
> "*.tmp"
>

> I've tried doing this in Windows 7 Pro, but it says it's not finding
> anything, which I find completely hard to believe, of course.

>
> Has anything changed, or should we not still be able to do wildcard-type
> searches?


Nothing has changed if you use a cmd window:

cd /d C:
dir/a/b/s/p *.tmp

or you could try a Powershell window for something similar more verbosely:

PS C:\> Get-ChildItem -Force -Recurse -include
..tmp -WarningAction:SilentlyContinue -ErrorAction:SilentlyContinue |
Select-Object -Property FullName | more

Tip: You could go and do something else after issuing this. Also, judging
by the messages being suppressed by those options, it's not clear to me if
the two results would be equivalent. <eg>


>
> Any help gratefully accepted. Thanks!
>
> Carmen


Good luck

Robert Aldwinckle
---

"Robert Aldwinckle" <> wrote:
>
>
> "Carmen Gauvin-O'Donnell" <> wrote in message
> news:...
>> Hey folks! Back with some of the old Windows OSes, if I wanted to
> > find all > my temporary files, all I had to do was open up my C:
> > drive and search for > "*.tmp"
>>
>
>> I've tried doing this in Windows 7 Pro, but it says it's not finding
> > > anything, which I find completely hard to believe, of course.
>
>>
>> Has anything changed, or should we not still be able to do
> > wildcard-type > searches?
>
>
> Nothing has changed if you use a cmd window:
>
> cd /d C:
> dir/a/b/s/p *.tmp
>
> or you could try a Powershell window for something similar more
> verbosely:
>
> PS C:\> Get-ChildItem -Force -Recurse -include .tmp
> -WarningAction:SilentlyContinue -ErrorAction:SilentlyContinue |
> Select-Object -Property FullName | more
>
> Tip: You could go and do something else after issuing this. Also,
> judging by the messages being suppressed by those options, it's not
> clear to me if the two results would be equivalent. <eg>
>
>
>>
>> Any help gratefully accepted. Thanks!
>>
>> Carmen


Good luck

Robert Aldwinckle
---

Try the free and fast "Everything" at www.stools.com