One of the feature I rather like in Windows 7 is the search bar in the Start Menu, that allows me to type in pretty much any Application name, and start it.
No more hunting through the Start Menu hierarchy in order to find that elusive application. It reminds me of a less comprehensive Quicksilver (on Os/x).
For some reason, after some updates and general usage the search bar stopped working as far as application were concerned. I still to this day am not sure why it stopped working.
The symptoms where, I would start the Start Menu, and type in for instance "Notepad" and it would show 3 folders, and hitting enter did nothing. Frustrating!!
I digged around in various options and settings and so forth, for a while without being able to fix my problem.
Thankfully there is a fix, but its obscure, and require you to reboot your computer to work.
The error is due to an invalid registry key.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderTypes\{ef87b4cb-f2ce-4785-8658-4ca6c63e38c6}\TopViews\{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}
This controls the value Start Menu's grouping values. The value is supposed to be:
“System.StartMenu.Group”
When the search stops working usually and in my case this value was set to Null.
- In order to change this value start regedit.
- Browse to the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderTypes\{ef87b4cb-f2ce-4785-8658-4ca6c63e38c6}\TopViews\{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000} registry key
- Click Modify
- Change the value to System.StartMenu.Group
- Reboot