Remove Windows Search version 4 from XP & 2003, try the following steps:

1. Start by running up Add & Remove Programs from the control panel and look for Windows Desktop Search in the list. Unlike with version 3, Windows Search v4 should be there.
2. If not, open a cmd window (click on Start, then “Run..” and type cmd in the Run dialogue that then appears). Then copy and paste the following line into the cmd window:

   %systemroot%\$NtUninstallKB940157$\spuninst\spuninst.exe

3. If that also fails and you get a “The system cannot find the path specified.” error, then I have zipped up a copy that you can download from here. To work out where to extract it to, type:

   echo %systemroot%

   into your cmd window and note the location it points to (it is likely to be C:\Windows, but may not be if you upgraded to XP for Windows 2000 for example). Open the zip file, and extract the $NtUninstallKB940157$ to this location. Now repeat step 2.

Update: Thanks to “Derek” for pointing out to me that I’d missed the “bleedin’ obvious”, ie that v4 can be removed via “Add Remove Programs”. I’ve added this as step 1 as a consequence. Steps 2 and 3 are likely redundant, but I’ve left them in for completeness.

Windows Search 4.0 Administrator's Guide

Windows Search 4.0 has a number of new features and enhancements that can help IT professionals deploy and maintain desktop search:

• Improvements in performance and stability of the indexer
• Fuller complement of Group Policy settings, available on all supported operating systems
• Fast sorting and grouping of results in Windows Explorer
• Improvements in indexing online e-mail
• Ability to index delegate mailboxes for online e-mail
• Support for indexing encrypted documents of local file systems
• Expanded ability to do fast remote queries of file shares, including on Windows XP and Server 2003
• Automatic indexing of shared folders
• Improvements in previews for earlier, supported operating systems (Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP)

Windows Search 4.0 extends the ability to search across remote desktops. Previously, only Windows Vista users could query recognizable indexes on remote Vista computers; now, WS4 enables users to query remote computers running any supported operating system. Remote querying includes the following features:

• Queries work across all supported OSes (Windows XP, Server 2003, Home Server, and Vista).
• All shared NTFS folders are automatically indexed (excludes all FAT file systems).
• All shared, and therefore indexed, locations can be remotely queried.

The location on the remote computer must be shared and it must be indexed. With Group Policy, administrators can control whether shared locations are automatically indexed.

Querying from Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008

To query a remote computer, users use Windows Explorer to browse the shared, indexed folder on another machine and enter their searches in Explorer’s search box. If the location is not indexed, then Vista falls back to a slower GREP search instead of WS4.

Querying from Windows XP or Windows Server 2003

To query a remote computer, users select the location from their All Locations menu and enter their search query as usual. First, of course, they must add the remote location to their search scope:

1. From the Windows Search UI, click the All Locations menu and select Add Location.
2. Enter the full path of the location, or browse to the location.

Once added, the new location appears at the bottom of the All Locations menu allowing users to select that location to search in. In the same way, users can remove a location by selecting Remove Location. If the remote location is not indexed, a message appears advising users that the location cannot be searched.

FTP default domain setting

When using FTP in IIS on a Domain you must have to pain stakingly put the domain name in the username every time. Yes, this insures that the remote user must not guess just username, but domain name also. If this is of no concern to you there is a way to set the FTP default domain.

That is, if your domain is SeattleDom then, prior to editing, user John Doe must login with a user name of SeattleDom\JDoe.

Following the steps below will drop the domain requirement and allow a username of simply JDoe.

To set the default domain used for things like ftp go to the IIS server and:

Modify the DefaultLogonDomain in the IIS Metabase

When you specify the DefaultLogonDomain domain in your IIS settings, users are not required to enter their domain name with their user name (for example, MYDOMAIN\MyUserName) when logging in to your FTP site. If your FTP server is a member server, and the user accounts are in the local security database, this task is not necessary.

Click Start, and then click Run.

In the Open: text box, type cmd .

At the command prompt, type the following for your version of IIS:

For IIS 4.0, type:

cd /d %windir%\system32\inetsrv\adminsamples

cscript adsutil.vbs set msftpsvc/DefaultLogonDomain domain_name

For IIS 5.0, type:

cd /d %systemdrive%\inetpub\adminscripts

cscript adsutil.vbs set msftpsvc/DefaultLogonDomain domain_name

For domain_name, type the name of your domain.

Type exit to close the command prompt dialog box.