I had a strange problem where Windows Vista’s desktop search wasn’t indexing files. I tried to rebuild the index and after a couple of weeks only 10 files were indexed.

I finally came accross the fix to this problem here to change the Search and Index power options from PowerSaver to something else.

1. Open Power Options in Vista (Control Panel -> System and Maintenance -> Power Options).
2. Under your current selected plan, click “Change plan settings”.
3. Click “Change advanced power settings”.
4. Under “Search and Indexing”, change to Balanced or High Performance.

The indexing took about an hour after that, and all missing files were finally included.