If you think the Windows Search tool has got worse in recent years, then XSearch might appeal. It's what the authors call a "classic search tool": there's no indexing, no metadata support, but the program does provide a surprising number of ways to locate the files you need.

After entering a part of the file name, for instance, you might decide to search by file size. This could be as simple as looking for files under, say, 25MB. But it's also easy to search for files of an exact size, or files which lie between two particular sizes.

Similarly, if you need to search for files by date and time, you're able to use the Created, Last Modified or Last Accessed times. And again, you can look for files specified on, before or after a particular time, or between two times.

You can also search for files which contain specific words. And once more, there are plenty of options. Enter your keywords, and you can have XSearch return files which contain all, some or none of them; there are "exact phrase" and "case sensitive" searches; you can even search for hexadecimal values, or look for the Unicode or UTF-8 versions of your words.

An Advanced section allows you to decide the type of files you'd like to search (normal, read-only, hidden or system), whether you want to search subfolders, and more.

And there are some useful extras, including optional Explorer integration (right-clicking drives or folders will provide an XSearch menu entry), and the ability to save your more complex searches for easy recall later.