Like all the other operating systems, Windows also comes with a strong search feature. But it does not include features to search the Windows Registry as well as the file system. If you want to search for something in both the file system as well as on the Windows Registry, then you can try a freeware tool called WinFindr.
WinFindr is a Windows application that can search for anything on your PC. It can search for the files and folders on your local drives or removable drives. It can also search for things in the Windows Registry. It is available both as a portable application and also in form of an installer package.
In the user interface of WinFindr, we can simply enter the search terms for which we want to search the file system or the Registry. We can use simple search terms, we can use wildcards using characters like * and ?, and we can use regular expressions (RegEx) for advanced searches. This tool also supports negative search terms just like in a search engine.
In the options, we can choose which items we want to search for – folders, files, registry keys or registry files. After this we can simply click on the “Search” button and let it scan through the system for the files, folders or the registry entries.
When the search results are displayed, we can scroll through them and click on them to find the respective locations. We can also save these searches for later use. These found results can be exported as a report file in TXT, CSV or HTML file format.
This is a very advanced search tool and can search for files hidden inside the ZIP archives as well. It can search inside the RAR archives too. Furthermore, it can search the data inside ePub ebooks, the PDF files, Microsoft Word documents and OpenOffice ODT documents. It can even search inside the ID3V2 metadata inside the MP3 files.
You can download WinFindr from https://winfindr.com/.