Fixing empty search results in the Windows 10 Settings (the shiny new Control Panel)

This happened on a few machines I am responsible for, after the upgrade to Windows 10.
You click “Start”, type “updates”, it suggests “Check for Updates” in the “Settings” app, you click <enter> and it opens an empty settings window with no search results. Great.

After looking around for a while, I stumbled over the fix, detailed by winaero.com and rchived here.

In short:

  1. Win+R
  2. %LocalAppData%\Packages\windows.immersivecontrolpanel_cw5n1h2txyewy\LocalState
  3. Right click the directory called “Indexed”, go to Properties => Advanced
  4. Click “Allow files in this folder to have contents indexed in addition to file properties”
    If this option is already selected, de-select it, finish point 5, then go back through this list again to re-select it
  5. Click OK a few times, and agree to propagate the settings to subfolders and files

Hooray! Search works.

Working Search

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