Finally! Well over a year ago I wrote about how a Microsoft blog was outlining how to make a Vista “PowerToy” gadget. The gadget that they were using for their demonstration was a Vista Search Index controller where you could pause or start indexing on-demand. For one reason or another the gadget was never actually released… until now!
The gadget, which is pictured to the right, is pretty conservative in the amount of space it consumes. It will show how many items are currently being indexed, and has several features that Vista power users will surely love:
- Monitor the current state of the indexer
- See how many items need to be processed
- View the total count of indexed items
- Stop and start the indexing service
- Open the Indexing Options control panel
- View the installed Windows Search version number
- Multiple backgrounds / color combinations
- Windows Search 4 Preview only (review): “Index Now” functionality. This disables the “Back Off” functionality of the indexer for faster indexing.
I highly recommend using this gadget for any of the Vista users out there. Being able to pause the indexing is really nice for when you’re doing something computer-intensive like playing a game.
I can’t believe someone hasn’t made a Yahoo Mail Checker gadget yet
This one looks good, though. Will try it out. Thanks.
I have tried it on vista ultimate. “Index now” doesn’t work – it cannot find some script. Then I tried to reinstall it but it doesn’t show on gadget list. Second installation did not help – just got another version of the same gadget.
Gadget sounds great but it doesn’t work for me. I think its inability to uninstall is a major fault.
pemar – I updated the gadget yesterday to fix the issue you described. Can you try again and see if the download works now? Thanks.
Unfortunately, to uninstall it you must disable the gadget (ie. close it), then *restart* the Sidebar, and then uninstall it normally. This is due to a bug in how the Sidebar handles gadgets that load code from DLLs. Once the gadget is loaded, the Sidebar process never lets go until you close it.
Haven’t tried it myself, but a quick search turned up this gadget:
[gallery.live.com]
Not sure if that’s what you’re looking for.
Thanks for updating us Brandon!
I like the idea of this gadget for my Vista machine, and I was able to download it easily. The thing is, when I went to run the file to install it, I got the dialog box saying “Windows cannot open this file” and “Windows needs to know what program you want to use to open it.” Any help with what I need to do to get this gadget file installed would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!
Try opening it in Internet Explorer. That might work better for you.
OK, you got me on the right track. Turns out that going thru IE and using WinRAR, I did get the gadget file opened and unpacked on the Desktop. The thing is, it seems that I’m missing something very basic on how to get the gadget actually *installed* on the machine and into the Sidebar. I’m sure we’re talking about doing something very simple here – I just don’t know what it is. Nothing urgent, of course, so whenever you get a chance. I’m already blown away by the caring nature that you two bring to this one-of-a-kind cyber information website. Good stuff, guys.
Have you tried not saving it to your desktop and just running it? You don’t want to unpack the gadget because it has a special “.gadget” extension that needs to be maintained.
Thank’s alot. it works successfully on Windows Sidebar (ported) on Xp with .Net Framework 3.0 and WDS 3.01/4.0 installed
Huh, that’s interesting that you got it to work on XP as well.
I had to reinstall vista and can’t get the index function to start and have reviewed the power option problem and many others. What can one do. Only a program has the rights to change the registry.