My only explanation is that the Windows 10 search rewrite metadata was outsourced to a team that didn't actually know how Windows works.

It seems like they stripped all metadata, including visual names of items themselves, and instead substituted random words.

The result is like playing a text-based adventure game without a list of the verbs the game supports.

Per memory, 7 and even 98 had a perfectly reasonable and accurate search.

Yes! For example, opening Visual Studio Code:

If I type VS... Visual Studio Code! Cool. (wonder why it did not suggest Visual Studio itself which I also have installed, buy hey I got what I wanted)

If I type VSC... ??? config files and some random XMLs from the deep realms of AppData

If I type vscode... No results, try a web search!

If I type Visual Studio... THE Visual Studio shows, but no Code in sight

If I type Visual Studio Code... There it is again!

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The whole rigmarole is just... Huh?! How does one even reach that point? I can't think about any naive buggy way that could reasonably cause such discrepancy of results. Just search by Filename and Display Name! Or whatever criteria, but be consistent!

When I start typing "solidworks" it alternates (with lag) between the Solidworks core software and Solidworks Explorer. I only get the right one ~half the time, since it seems like it will open the one that would have loaded rather than the one that is at the top of the list when you hit enter.

I definitely feel there's some poor-UX lazy loading of results.

But literally mystified why there isn't a prebuilt index table that instantly loads the top results.

All Windows apps / panels + last 250 files opened shouldn't be hard.

Trying to get to the network devies page is equally infuriating- it's under network adapters and options in Control Panel, and may or may not actually be accessible from the new Settings app- I don't remember.

Even better, try setting the dead zones on an XInput game pad. Off the top of my head, it goes something like: “Settings” > “Bluetooth and other devices” > “Printers and other devices“ > Right click your game pad > “Gamepad Settings” > select your gamepad > “Ok” > “Deadzones”

The really sad thing is that Windows has multiple accessibility layers for every visual control (e.g. Active Accessibility).

So there is literally already a textual, and usually interpretable, path to any window.

Apparently tying search into that made too much sense though, and so instead we get a reinvented (slightly square) wheel.

Win+R -> ncpa.cpl

How could I have forgotten?