If you use Windows XP’s built in Search frequently to find your files then you might find this Registry hack very useful. Normally to search a file, you would go through the drill - search, then specify that it is case-sensitive, then specify that you want to search subfolders, and so on and so forth. Use this Registry hack to specify the search parameters that makes it most comfortable for you to search your system.

Go to Start>Run. Enter Regedit and hit enter. This opens the Registry Editor.

Navigate to:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer

Set any of the following DWORD Values to 1 or to 0 (1=True, 0=False). What to set them to is obvious.

CaseSensitive: Do a case-sensitive search
IncludeSubFolders: Search subfolders
SearchHidden: Search hidden files and folders
SearchSlowFiles: Search tape backup
SearchSystemDirs: Search system folders

The next time you conduct a search, you won’t need to enter a single parameter.

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