Google is making me gaga when I try to use the Google Desktop search service to find files on my hard drive. When I had Google index all of the files on my C: drive, retrieving them by keyword searches worked great for a time, but then I started getting errors whenever I tried to open files after I did a Desktop search.
A. For all the buzz they get for being smart enough to leave Bill Gates trailing in a cloud of digital dust, the Googlers missed the binary boat here, Mr. C.
The extremely useful Google Desktop search tool (http://desktop.google.com) works like gangbusters when the user first installs it. The software scans the entire hard drive and then creates an index of the computer’s contents – just like how the Google search engine indexes the Internet.
The program then runs in the background to index all the new files added to the computer. But it does not notice when a user moves an indexed file to a different folder. This is not a good thing, and the Google techies have a lame but effective fix.
To re-index a hard drive where files have been moved from their original location, a user must uninstall the Google Desktop program and then reinstall it. This definitely fixes the glitch, but it also means that a user must endure another period of hours – or maybe even days – when the drive is indexed.
The instructions for uninstall and reinstalling for re-indexing are posted at the Google Desktop help area:
Click on Start and then Control Panel. In that display, open the Add/Remove Programs icon and scroll down the resulting list to Google Desktop. Click on remove and say yes when asked if you really want to do this.
When finished, go to http://desktop.google.com and download and reinstall the program.
Q. I want to remove all the websites I have visited lately that are listed under the Google search box’s tiny arrow. Can you help?
A. The trick is to open the Google search page and then click on the first item in the list of past search terms that drops down. Now hit the delete key followed by the down arrow key to the next item, followed by the delete key and then down arrow and so forth.
This will scroll down through each item and delete it for good.
To anticipate some confusion: People who added the Google toolbar to their browsers at http://toolbar.google.com need to click on the Options button to the right of the search box.
You can select boxes to either stop keeping histories or to erase them at the end of each session.
