On Windows Vista and every subsequent version of Windows, if I search for a file and include the entire C:\ drive, I might very well have time to make tea or a sandwich while the search results come in. On Windows XP, using the search dialog with the animated dog, I can search the entire C:\ drive and expect it to be done in a minute or two, if not in seconds.
It can’t just be nostalgia; I can replicate these results on period-accurate hardware today. What changed with Vista to make file searching so much slower, even with indexing enabled?
Because it didn’t index file contents back then.
Also, storage wasn’t cheap so people deleted stuff back then.
Also, that shit was slow back then too. Searching a file share was awful. Now it’s a magically federated index. It used to be so slow you could buy a google appliance for indexing your data.