Remove “Download Windows Search to improve history and favorite results” in IE 8

The new Internet Explorer 8 is a great upgrade from IE 7 and has lots of cool new features like InPrivate browsing and web slices. However, Microsoft always like to bundle their products with their OS and with their browser.

Case in point. IE 8 will now show you this annoying little message (almost like an ad) whenever you type something into the address bar:

Download Windows Search to improve history and favorites results

Thanks buddy, but maybe I don’t care about Windows Search! Maybe it’s not the best search tool in the world and hence I have not installed it on my computer. But that won’t stop Microsoft from forcing you to use it.

The official web page for this message on Microsoft Support only gives you two solutions to fix this problem: Download Windows Search and Enable Windows Search. Wow. You’re kidding me right.

What’s even more ridiculous about this is that there is a way to disable it, but they don’t tell you. Oh and wait till you hear how it has to be disabled, probably the most forced down your throat thing you’ve ever heard of.

So in order to get rid of this message, you have to click on the link at least once and then wait for 7 days to pass before it goes away!!! Have you heard of anything more retarded?

Personally, I don’t think Microsoft should be treating us like babies who don’t know how to use their computers. If Windows Search was so fabulous that we would die without it, we would have read about it on blogs, websites, etc.

If you don’t want to wait 7 days, you can try a few other things. Click on Start, type CMD and open the command prompt. Now type in the following:

[REG ADD "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Search" /v CurrentVersion /t REG_SZ /d 99 /f ]

This should work for Windows Vista and Windows 7. It may not work for Windows Server 2008 though.

The only other way to disable it is to disable auto complete in IE. I personally don’t like to do that because I use auto complete quite a bit. But if you don’t care, you can go to Internet Options, Content tab, click on Settings, and then uncheck the autocomplete entries.