> when it actually still actually searched in files rather than an incomplete index

I don't even care about in files. I just want a file named foo.txt to appear when I search for "foo" on the directory containing it.

Windows 10 is completely unable to run that search.

Yes! and even if you search for foo.txt, it will also display foo_something.txt even though you didn't search for a wildcard (foo*.txt).

And then you have that "fantastic" UI that helpfully tells you that the file is in "C:\Users\something\Documents\..." regardless how large you make the window. Who's brilliant decision was it to truncate the locating folder without any way to resize the column and actually see the full path?

Anyway, just giving a shoutout to grepWin again, it's one of the first thing I install on any Windows box while hoping that everyone involved in the Windows Search "experience" steps on a lego brick every day of their lives.

Sorry for the almost meme-like content but... Are you getting results?

My Windows simply doesn't find any of those.

Since it's a VM, I gave up long ago and search its contents from Linux.

You're the only person I've ever seen who agrees with me on that. W2K was the perfect windows - more polished than NT4, less bullshit than XP.

I also wholeheartedly agree: Windows 2000 was the pinnacle of the Windows NT line before Microsoft merged the consumer line (3.1/95/98/Me) with the professional line (NT) beginning with Windows XP, which unfortunately added all sorts of annoyances to Windows. The underpinnings of Windows are fine and are quite a formidable alternative to Unix. WSL has also been a major game changer, allowing me to have a Unix workflow without loading up a separate VM. It’s just a shame the upper layers get in the way, though the Pro and Education versions of Windows are less in-your-face with these annoyances than the home versions. I’d love to have a Windows 2000 UI (with a search bar, introduced in Vista) on top of Windows 11.

I really don't understand where the nostalgia for XP comes from. Well, actually I think I do because a lot of home users probably didn't use NT4 and 2k and went straight from 98/ME to XP. But I remember all the ridicule that XP got for being such a terrible bubblegum OS X imitation, with required activation, and a bunch of stability and driver issues that were eventually ironed out. XP after Service Pack 2 was also rock solid, and probably still the best choice for a retro gaming PC because it's got decent hardware and software support and the activation has been worked around.

But yeah, I used every Windows version since 3.11 full-time, and 2k was perfection - literally can't think of any downside to it.

I used both 2k and XP.

2k is pretty great, but fully patched XP is too. It’s totally subjective but as much as I loved 2k I’d give an edge to end-state XP mainly for its ability to be customized with third party .msstyle themes, of which there were many that were well made and good looking.

Fully patched 7 is a bit better yet for me though, because its theming engine added support for full depth alpha which really opened up possibilities for theme designers. It was a massive disappointment when Windows 8 came along and gutted the engine, regressing it to being barely more capable than Windows 1.x with all the flat squares.