Win XP: What does Findfast do for me?

[Caveman]

It's loaded in my startup directory. Do I need it or can I turn it off to save system resources?

 

[Trashman]

thats an MS Office utlity....speeds up document searches.....I'd take it out....of startup.

 

[beansbaxter]

I agree...I've always deleted it from my Startup folder no matter the Office or Windows version I've ever used.

It's just a useless TSR that, according to Microsoft, helps assist in file searching through a quicker search process. It doesn't make any difference, so free up some memory and just delete it.

Hope that helps some.

 

[bacillus]

are you using office 97?

 

[Derango]

FindFast? It slows down your machine while needlessly searching through your computer for microsoft office documents so that when you need it...you'll be able to find the 2/10ths of a second faster. Dump it.

 

[Caveman]

Yes, I'm using office 97. Does that make a difference? I'd like to dump it...

 

[c0rv1d43]

Just a bit of information might be in order, for those wishing to kill FindFast. In at least some versions of Office it is best NOT to simply remove this app from the startup group. Some Office apps are hard-coded to make use of the index files created by FindFast. Search the MSKB for the proper way to shut down your version of FindFast. I believe you use the Control Panel applet to a) shut down indexing, and then b) delete the indexes. At least some versions of the Office apps are hard-coded to look in the FindFast indexes first, so your searches will actually be slower if you only turn FindFast off without removing those files. (It's probably not that big of a deal unless you already have accumulated large index files.)

BTW, FindFast gets reactivated on some Office versions when you apply patches / updates or when you go into the Office setup routines to change the configuration of your Office installation.

- Collin

 

[ACE101]

Findfast is bad bad bad bad and stupid. And it's bad too. It wastes disk and cpu time indexing documents. Make it go away, seriously. It's a waste of your resources.

And as already mentioned, it's more complex than taking it out of startup these days. In fact, with the more recent Oriface versions you'll find an icon for it in your control panel. You can either turn it off there and hope that some Office product doesn't restart it, or do what I did and turn it off there, and then rename the underlying executable to something that can't be found. It's the only guaranteed way to keep it from being reactivated.

Let me reiterate, it's bad stupid bad dumb bad wierd bad goofy and indeed, plain bad.

Ron