Skip to content

Enable Search Box to Search Internet in Windows 7

By Codrut Nistor

Posted in How-to, Windows-7

Windows 7 has a great feature named Search Box which is available at the bottom of start menu. Search Box is capable of finding any object in indexed form which means that the search is instantaneous and real-time. This further means that the objects can be located as users start typing the name of them. However many administrators and users do not know that Search Box can also be configured to search the Internet contents right from itself. This configuration requires elevated privileges and as an administrator of a Windows 7 computer if you want to configure Search Box to find Internet contents you are required to follow the steps given below:

  1. Logon to the computer with administrator account.

  2. At the bottom of start menu in search box type GPEDIT.MSC command and press enter key.

  3. On the opened Local Group Policy Editor snap-in under User Configuration expand Administrative Templates and then click on Start Menu and Taskbar from the left pane.

  4. From the right pane double-click on Add Search Internet link to Start Menu and from the opened box select Enabledradio button.

  5. Once done click on Ok button to save the changes and in Command Prompt type GPUPDATE /FORCE command to allow the changes to take effect.