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Add Wikipedia, Google to Vista's Start Search Box
Posted by Kevin Purdy at 11:15 PM on May 29, 2008
The Online Tech Tips Blog digs into Vista's Start Search box—which earned an honorable mention in our recent Hive Five app launcher roundup—and details how to make it even more convenient by adding quick searching of Wikipedia, Google, or nearly any other site with a search interface. We've shown you how to perform super-quick "I'm feeling lucky" searches from Start Search, but this tutorial digs into opening up a whole results page. If your Vista lacks a Group Policy Editor, the How-To Geek has a registry-editing solution that should work just as well.
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
There are currently no AU comments for this post.
orkgandalf
Posted 12:32 AM 30/5/08
Much simpler you can adopt Start++ and add anything you want to your "Start" button. Specially if you have restrictions to edit local policies.
Ork
orkgandalf
Fuzz
Posted 12:14 AM 30/5/08
That would be handy, IF my start button still worked. I had to switch to "classic start menu" because clicking the button did nothing. Stupid Vista.
Fuzz
tadtam
Posted 12:57 AM 30/5/08
Doesn't work with Vista Home Basic or Home Premium versions. Group Policy Editor not available with them.
tadtam
kaiyao
Posted 12:50 AM 30/5/08
@Fuzz:
Obviously your Vista installation is somewhat malfunctioning. I don't think other Vista users face this problem (I don't).
kaiyao
ngetchell
Posted 12:59 AM 30/5/08
This is a real cool feature but gpedit.msc doesn't come with Home Premium or Basic. You need to edit the registry get get this to work.
ngetchell
OX4
Posted 3:00 AM 30/5/08
Cools, I'm gonna try this when I get home.
@Fuzz:
Did you ever stop to consider that something was wrong with your installation instead of blaming the entire OS? Or did you think that Vista shipped to everyone with a faulty Start button?
OX4
chriskraft
Posted 4:09 AM 30/5/08
Great tip. I setup mine to search Google.
I use desktop search all the time now that I have it 'tuned it up'. I modifed the default settings (Start | Control Panel | Indexing Options) so that only the file types I use frequently are indexed. You'll be suprized at number of files indexed by default and that many only have their titles and not content indexed.
It's a great time saver. As a developer I frequently have to lookup older information related to a code change or discussion of specific defect. My search results now include links to source files as well as related emails.
chriskraft
startswithone1
Posted 8:17 AM 30/5/08
I second orkgandalf's vote for start++, and urge lifehacker to do an article on it.
startswithone1
genderbunny
Posted 10:40 PM 30/5/08
Cool, I can finally uninstall Launchy from my Vista laptop. (Launchy and Vista don't play nice in my experience, but I needed it for the custom searches.)
Or in other words, my Vista install will now finally be as useful as my XP install.
genderbunny
Neel_Relaxation
Posted 12:32 AM 31/5/08
Not really useful for me since I have Opera open all the time on my laptop. Opera has a nifty feature where you can add in custom search boxes to the main browser window. I have wikipedia, amazon, imdb, btjunkie, google and a few other search boxes added to it. Just type in the search term and pull down and select the site to be searched! Such a useful feature.
Neel_Relaxation
premankan
Posted 6:46 PM 31/5/08
Thanks a ton for this tip, yea and shouts out to The Geek for the registry method....I got it working on both my Ultimate Desktop and Home Basic laptop!!
premankan