Search Wikipedia, Google Or Yahoo, From Vista's Start Menu Instant Search Box

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Search Wikipedia, Google or Yahoo From Vista's Start Menu Instant Search Box.

If you access or search Wikipedia frequently and if you want to add an option to Search Wikipedia to your Windows Vista Start Menu Instant Search Box, here is what you need to do.

Type gpedit.msc in the search bar and hit enter to open the Local Group Policy Editor.

Navigate to User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Instant Search > Custom Instant Search Internet Search Provider policy setting.

Click on Properties, to open its Properties box.

Enable the policy setting by selecting Enabled. Next in the first 'string or dll...' box type Search Wikipedia. And in the next 'url to use' box, type http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%w . Click Apply > OK. Reboot. If you wish to apply the changed policy setting immediately, open cmd.exe > gpupdate/force and hit Enter.

Now open your Start Menu. You should be able to see the Search Wikipedia option. Type a search term and click on Search Wikipedia; your browser will open with Wikipedia results.

Similarly, if you want to add Google instead from Vista's Start Menu Search Box, copy-paste the following url instead:

http://www.google.com/search?q=%w

To add Google or Yahoo, from Vista' Start Menu Search Box, you may also download and use Start++ Tool. Install it. After installation, if you type say, g winvistaclub server , it will open the Google search result page for winvistaclun in your browser. Similarly for Yahoo search; its y winvistaclub server . Its quite a nifty utility !

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