The Inefficient Scanning
The Windows 11 Search Indexer is designed to silently map the contents of your hard drive in the background, ensuring that when you search for a file in the Start Menu, the results appear instantly. By default, the indexer is programmed to look inside compressed archives (such as .zip or .rar files) to catalogue the individual files hidden within them. If you frequently download massive archives, backup files, or large code repositories, forcing the indexer to decompress and read these files consumes a massive amount of CPU power and disk I/O, often causing noticeable system lag and spinning up your laptop fans unnecessarily.
Excluding Compressed Archives
To improve system performance and reduce disk wear, you can configure the Windows Indexing Options to treat compressed files as opaque blocks of data, stopping it from looking inside them.
Press the Windows Key, type Indexing Options, and press Enter to open the control panel applet. Click the Advanced button at the bottom (you will need administrator rights to proceed). In the Advanced Options dialogue box, click on the File Types tab. Scroll down the long alphabetical list of file extensions until you find zip. Click on the word “zip” to highlight it. Look at the bottom section labelled “How should this file be indexed?”. Change the radio button from “Index Properties and File Contents” to exactly Index Properties Only. Click OK, then click Close. The indexer will still find the .zip file itself if you search for its name, but it will no longer waste CPU cycles cracking it open to read the contents inside.