Tweak the XP search option
This morning I needed to find a file that contains a certain value. I knew it was an XSD, so I started the XP search option and entered the *.xsd as the filter for the file name and correlation_id as the text I needed to find.
To my surprise, it didn't find the file. Changing the filter to *.* didn't help. I tried another text of which I know it is in all XSD files (xmlns), and still it found nothing.
I googled the Microsoft part of the Internet (http://www.Google.com/Microsoft) for an explanation and soon discovered that the standard XP search option will only search files that are registered as being text files. All other files are simply ignored when you try to search for text in a file.
Fortunately, I also found the solution to my problem. The registry contains a setting which you can use to override this standard behavior.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ContentIndex]
"FilterFilesWithUnknownExtensions"=dword:00000001
Changing the setting to the above value will search all files for the text you enter. You can of course use RegEdit to do this, or download this registry patch to change this setting.
More registry tweaks can be found here.