In Vista, you can have a lot of control over how the indexing of files takes place. Indexing is what happens behind the scenes so that when you search, the search happens quickly. But indexing has a cost. If you are modifying file often, or adding and removing a lot of files, this can slow down your system as the indexing takes place. If you know that there are certain areas you will never need to search, or certain types of files that you won't search for, you can turn off the indexing for them so that you get better system performance.

To modifying your indexing options, click on the Start Button and type in: Indexing Options, then hit Enter.

Click on the Modify button. Then click Show All Locations.

Scroll through all of the options and check/uncheck the options that you want.

If you click the Advanced button, you can change other indexing options such as the file types.