When a users enters text in the search box on the start panel Windows automatically searches the file index as well.  The file index includes all of the searchable files on your hard drive and can be quite large.  One way to speed up searching through your start menu applications is to narrow the scope of the search so that it does not include hard drive files.

Prevent Start Menu Searches from searching the File index:

1. Open Registry Editor (regedit).

2. Navigate through HKEY_CURRENT_USER, Software, Microsoft, Windows, CurrentVersion, Explorer and finally Advanced.

3. Find and right click on Start_SearchFiles and select Modify.

4. Set the Value to 0.

Restart the Explorer.exe process or just reboot your computer.