Windows 8 Desktop App Search Problem (Solved! See description)
SOLUTION (If people want me to make a video of it, post in comments):
I finally solved the problem with the help provided by Gov from The Defrag Show.
-I turned off Syncing on my problem PC (steps in link below).
-I went to https://skydrive.live.com/P.mvc#!/win... and removed my Sync settings.
-I created another, local admin account on my problem PC.
-Using the new admin account I deleted my problem account/profile (keeping the user files).
-I went to C:\Users folder and renamed the folder of my problem account to something different. (you may need to take permission of the folder, search online on how to do that.) If you don't do this, your User folder will have a different name than the one you probably would like when you do the next time
-I (re)added a new user with the original account info that was having problems in the past, and, lo and behold, the partial word search was working!
-I had to re-add this PC as a trusted PC with my MS account.
-Turned on syncing with the working profile.
-This has fixed my problem and I hope it NEVER comes back. :)
PROBLEM:
I did a fresh install (not upgrade) of Windows 8 Pro. For some reason, when I search for apps by going to start and typing in the app name, it always tells me that no apps were found. Even for default apps like Bing, Internet Explorer, etc.
Previously, I was running Windows 8 Enterprise Trial Edition. I had this problem on there as well but since I knew I was going to be upgrading soon, I did not bother to try to figure it out. Something tells me that this has to do with my profile that gets saved with MS since this is a brand new install and App search feature refuses to work right from the start.
I uninstalled/reinstalled Windows Search from the add remove features and programs. The Windows Search service is running. I can search for Settings and Files and they work OK. Just cannot search apps.
On a friend's machine that has Windows 8 and the app search works just fine, I created an account for myself and the problem persisted.
On this PC, where I am having the problem, I created a test user account and app search for that account works just fine.
If I type in "Int*" I see Internet Explorer in the search results. If I leave out the "*" I get a "No apps match your search." message.
If anyone has any solution to fixing my desktop app search problem, I would very much appreciated it if you share it with me.