Blog
Visual C++ .NET Can't Find Squat
Date: 1/2/2005
After my last rant about the pathetic excuse for an IDE that Microsoft's Visual C++ .NET (2002) is, I have found a delightfully annoying quirk in the "Find in Files" function. Under certain circumstances that feature just stops working. Instead it says:
No files were found to look in.Find was stopped in progress.
And you want to know what the fix is?

You know I'm going to tell you anyway right?

Press Ctrl+Scroll Lock

Yup... uh huh. Thats it. Great eh? MiserySoft's finest.

Update: The saga continues....
Comments:
fret
03/02/2005 11:44am
My friends laughed so hard when I pointed out that the first line of a google search for MiserySoft says "Did you mean: Microsoft".

Hehe.
kovis
18/02/2005 9:29am
This "FEATURE" is truly annoying. Encountered it today.
Erik
24/08/2005 5:55pm
Thanks alot! That problem has been bothering me for ages.
showe
14/09/2005 7:29pm
This is ridiculous! Where did you find the solution?
fret
14/09/2005 10:16pm
My friend and close buddy: google ;)

Some forum somewhere... I forgot exactly where.
Salman Arshad
27/03/2006 3:11pm
Try resetting the "SYSTEM FILE" attribue on the folder containing files (and perhaps on the files themselves)

try:
c:\> CD XYZDIR
c:\> attrib -s /S /D

or type :
c:\> attrib /?
and see the available options

Worked for me when I tried to search on a copy of IEs temporary internet files.
Phil O (MSFT)
08/09/2006 11:17pm
I managed to get a consistent repro for this, which results in the following message:

Find all "SDFDSFSDFD", Subfolders, Find Results 1, "c:\WINDOWS"
No files were found to look in.
Find was stopped in progress.

Here is how you do it.

1. Start a Find In Files in a place with enough subfolders to give you chance to cancel it
2. Cancel using Ctrl+ScrollLock (which generates VK_CANCEL) but KEEP BOTH KEYS HELD DOWN
3. Switch focus to another application on the desktop. It doesn’t matter which, but I used Outlook.
4. Now release, IN THIS ORDER, the Ctrl key THEN the ScrollLock key.
5. Try a Find in Files again. It gives the output above.
6. Press Ctrl+ScrollLock with the focus on VS again.
7. Try a Find in Files again. It now works.

VS just calls the Windows API method GetAsyncKeyState(VK_CANCEL) to determine if the user wants to cancel the search thread.

After doing the focus shift at steps 3 and 4 GetAsyncKeyState always returns the top bit set indicating that the VK_CANCEL key is still being held down, which it isn’t.

I have brought this to the attention of the Windows OS group and will be tracking the resolution.

alice
15/11/2006 6:08pm
This help is so great! I was puzzled for several hours until got the help from your blog. Solute!
 
Reply
From:
Email (optional): (Will be HTML encoded to evade harvesting)
Message:
 
Remember username and/or email in a cookie.
Notify me of new posts in this thread via email.
BBcode:
[q]text[/q]
[url=link]description[/url]
[img]url_to_image[/img]
[pre]some_code[/pre]
[b]bold_text[/b]