Help

Usage

My hope is that the program is intuitive enough not to need documentation for basic usage.
See the Help menu in the program for more advanced features.

Complex queries (AND, OR, etc.)

If you have complex searches that you're not sure how to do, feel free to ask in the Discussions.
Most likely, the regular expresions syntax already lets you do what you want.

For example, here is a multi-word search for John AND Smith:

>(?=.*John[^\\]*\\?$)(?=.*Smith[^\\]*\\?$).*

To add another word Frank, insert (?=.*Frank[^\\]*\\?$) before the final .*.

Similarly, here is a multi-word search for John OR Smith:

>.*(John|Smith).*

To add another word Frank, insert |Frank after the Smith..

Known issue(s)

Please report any bugs or regressions in the Discussion forum! I try to fix them quickly.

Anti-virus warning:

If your anti-virus software incorrectly flags this program, try ANY of the following:

1. Tell your anti-virus software to exclude this program's folder from scanning altogether (recommended).
2. Try using the 32-bit and 64-bit programs separately (recommended). This works for most, but not all, anti-viruses:
   • If you're on a 64-bit system: While the program is running, search for SwiftSearch64 to find the 64-bit version in your Temp folder.
     Copy that somewhere and use that instead.
   • If you're on a 32-bit system: Delete the embedded 64-bit binary with Resoure Hacker.
3. Report the file to your anti-virus vendor to whitelist it.
4. Stop using buggy anti-virus software.
5. Stop using all anti-virus software. They have actually introduced dangerous new security holes in the past (example), making the system more unsafe than it was before.

Bugs:

• Can crash on NTFS volumes with small clusters (cluster size < file record size) if the MFT becomes
  fragmented and causes a file record to become split up into non-adjacent clusters on the disk.
  In practice, this usually only happens if the cluster size is 512 bytes (as file records are usually 1024 bytes).
  This will hopefully be fixed at some point, but it is low-priority.
  In the meantime, a workaround is to defragment your MFT to make sure no file records are split up.

Limitations:

• The search results do not refresh in real-time.
  This can impact search performance, so it is not done automatically.
  To manually refresh the cache, select a drive and press F5.

[Mike]

Would be nice to have some hotkeys to get to the different fields.

[Yee Haw]

Would like to see more explanation of how to use REGEX feature. So far I have ham-fisted the following, but would like to learn more:

starts Regular Expression search
\ escape charactor, means take next charactor special
example \x20=(space)
\x mean the hex ascii value
or \ means <escape><backslash> for directory boundary</backslash></escape>

anything starting with "python" ending with "exe" or "zip"

.\python[^\](exe|zip)\?
.\ = anything preceding a slash
python = "python"
[^\] = anything NOT a slash
(exe|zip) = "exe" OR "zip"
\? = 0 or 1 slash

.\winx\
any directory named "WinX"
. = anything
\ = slash escapes slash sets boundary as directory before
WinX = exactly "winx"
\ = sets boundary as directory after

.+apk
any file ending with apk
.(anything) +(1 or more) apk(string)

.+apk.+
anything with apk in path

.*apk\
any directory ending in apk

(.apk\|.gsm\)
any directory ending in apk or gsm

(.apk\|.gsm\)(.*ZIP)
any zip file in a directory ending in apk or gsm

(.apk\|.gsm\)(.*(zip|img|bin))
any zip, img or bin file in a directory ending in apk or gsm