New search engine for Windows operating system, Windows Search 4.0 has been released as complete final RTM version. Windows Search 4.0 updates desktop instant search system, including Windows Desktop Search (WDS) 2.6, and also search engine service used by programs such as Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 and Microsoft Office OneNote 2007 to improve indexing, instant searching, finding and previewing of documents, e-mail messages, music files, photos, and other items on the computer.

Improvements to Windows Search 4.0 has been discussed in great details when Windows Search 4.0 Preview is released months ago. Here’s features, enhancements and improvements in Windows Search version 4.0:

  • Support for indexing encrypted documents of local file systems.
  • Reduced affect on Microsoft Exchange when you index e-mail in online mode, and there is no local cache (.ost).
  • Support for indexing online delegate mailboxes.
  • Support for client-to-client remote query to shared indexed locations.
  • Improved indexing performance.
  • Faster previewer updates for Windows XP.
  • Per-user Group Policy settings such as prevent adding of UNC, custom, path indexed locations, and default indexed and excluded path.
  • Windows software updates for Watson errors.
  • Support for the following new enterprise Group Policy objects such as computer policies to prevent adding Universal Naming Convention (UNC) locations to index, prevent customizing indexed locations, prevent automatically adding shared folders to the index, disable indexer back-off, prevent clients from querying the index remotely, prevent adding user, specified locations to the All Locations menu and enable throttling for online mail indexing.

Windows Search 4.0 is available for both 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (x64) versions of Windows Vista, Windows Search 2008, Windows XP and Windows Search 2003, and the full offline standalone setup installer for Windows Search 4.0 can be downloaded from Microsoft Download Center.

Download 32-bit Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 Windows Search 4.0 setup package (direct download link to 36 languages standalone installer Windows6.0-KB940157-x86.msu)

Download 64-bit Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 Windows Search 4.0 setup package (direct download link to 11 languages stand-alone installer Windows6.0-KB940157-x64.msu)

Download 32-bit Windows XP Windows Search 4.0 setup package (22 stand-alone language available) (no longer available)

Download x64-based Windows XP Windows Search 4.0 setup package (10 standalone language installers available)

Download 32-bit Windows Server 2003 and Windows Home Server Windows Search 4.0 setup package (22 standalone languages available)

Download x64-based Windows Server 2003 package (standalone installer for 10 languages available)

There are also Multilingual User Interface Pack (MUI) setup install package for Windows Search 4.0 for Windows XP and for Windows Server 2003, which contain an English (EN-US ENU) package installer that also contains resources for the rest of 30 languages. Download links can be found at KB940157.