Windows Search 4.0 on XP: finding mht files

[formerlogin]

I am running windows XP SP3, and it's all up to date as far as it can be. For a number of reasons I don't want to update this machine. Pentium D 930 runnning at 3422 Mhz , Asrock 775HDtvwins motherboard. Mixed SATA and PATA discs. Most everything else works just fine, except I have a very large mixed collection of documents. I know it's unpopular, but quite frankly the most comprehensive search product I have used is Windows Search 4.0. Sadly it's inconsistent in getting results; mostly the problem lies in finding mht archive files saved either from Firefox or Internet Explorer. It simply finds only some (actually most) of them from the indexed locations. Strangely if you search for "type:mht" search it doesn't find them all. "Everything" for example finds plenty more. However the problem seems to rest with only certain files and I cannot work out what it is about them that causes them not to be found. I have tried Sysinternal's "streams.exe" to remove “blocked files” from “another machine”, makes no difference. I’ve checked all the security attributes, even removed the “compressed” bit. The mimetype persistent handlers are up to date.
All to no avail. I’ve done lots of searches on the Internet, and cannot find the problem.
An example would be:
Search DOES NOT find: https/support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/159865 saved as mht either from Firefox or Explorer ( I don’t use Explorer as a rule, just as part of this experiment)
Search DOES find: https/support.symantec.com/en_US/article.HOWTO4400.html
Copernic does find the files (but I find the free product has other deficiencies for my purposes)
Agent Ransack does find the files, however not being an indexing program is slow over the whole of my document store. (It’s brilliant for finding bits of code etc when confined to a few directories)
I think I’ve done fairly comprehensive research, so if there’s a Windows Search 4.0 expert out there who has an idea it would be just fantastic if they have a suggestion.
Many thanks in anticipation.

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

I'm surprised you find Agent Ransack slow. It positively zips through my files.

 

[formerlogin]

I'm surprised you find Agent Ransack slow. It positively zips through my files.

Thanks Phillip for replying, like I said agent ransack is excellent, and say for finding code snippets is better, but for a large folder of something like 3500 ( 8 Gig) files and subfolders of mixed types, word, pdf mht, html, and for that matter .maff some of which are > 200 pages, it takes it a goodly while. What i'm trying to get at here is why the thing (windows search) that is designed to do all this seems to fail to find some files that certainly exist.
Even the search for the literal title of some of the .mht files fails to find them, where Everything ( which is a brilliant properties search engine ) does, and does it instantly. There's something odd going on. Either the product (windows search) is deficient, a possibility, or there is something about the files it cannot find that it simply doesn't like. I just can't work out what it is.
Cheers!