What's to stop people from using Open-Shell's search?
>the Classic style you can also register custom search programs (like Agent Ransack of Everything) that let you search for files anywhere on your computer. Also you can register search tools like Google and Bing to search the Internet. Read the documentation for instructions and examples
Memory dump are not in the same place for all computers, like you I was looking to find my dump to see them in BlueScreenView (http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html) and did not find them UNTIL I made a search on my local disk-drives for *.DMP
And I found all Windows dump files this way, so just search on your local disks for *.dmp.
Personally I use http://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack to search files on my computer it's free and powerful :)
OH my bad. I forgot a key detail. I would suggestion using Agent Ransack to search through all the files at the same time. You'll see the text string nice and neat on the right side result pane. You'd then open up the specific file in a text editor and find the text again and see al the dialog around it. It could get messy though. I dunno. I have a lot of respect for what you're doing because the task is so overwhelming.
And no need to run around, Anet are all about bloating that .dat file. For example, there's still GW1 stuff inside of it...so anything between GW2: BWE1 and now will be in there.
Firstly, I would try a program like Agent Ransack to search for the file (or for text within it).
You could also try the Text recovery converter as suggested in the error message.
[](/pinkiefedora)
See, your first problem was not assuming the end user is an idiot. My method of dealing with this was using Agent Ransack to search for documents in places they should not have been and using WinDirStat to find any huge chunks of files like photos in silly places. Both those programs can be chucked on a USB stick or a network share and both only take a few minutes to run.
My Trump card, if time permits, is making a disk image of the whole computer. Something missing? Pull it from the disk image. Shit really broken? Restore from the disk image and it's like you never did anything at all. If it's a company computer, it should not have much on it, so a complete clone should not take too long depending on hardware.
http://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack
Seriously, if it's already on the computer you're using this is faster. Much better than Windows search.
Now downloading rips of DVDs I already own, but they're all the way upstairs, in a footlocker, that has stuff piled on top, and is dusty... now that's totally justifiable.
Or buying the game S.T.A.L.K.E.R. on Steam when it was $2 even though I own it on DVD, because fuck finding the DVD, having to have it in the drive, etc...
Some Windows stuff that hasn't been mentioned yet:
Agent Ransack - Super fast file search
Classic Shell - Bring the Start button back in Windows 8(.1)
Treesize - check the size of all your folders
there commercial version called file locator pro is much better.,
but the free one isnt bad for free.. and i guess they are finally making the free version called "file locator lite'.. i think this is newer than the agent ransack one on their page.