I came across an issue where a user on Windows XP was using Windows Explorer to search within a folder located in a branch office across a VPN. However, their search produced no results, even when it was confirmed there should be.
After some digging I found a Microsoft hotfix that fixed this, but it wasn’t easy to find so hopefully this post may help others find it sooner.
The hotfix is available from this article:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/885843
When you run a search for files or for folders across a slow network link in Microsoft Windows Server 2003 or in Microsoft Windows XP, the search result set is empty. This symptom occurs even though the files or the folders in question actually exist. Additionally, you receive the following message: "Search is complete. There are no results to display." For example, you may experience this problem when you search a remote mapped drive over a wide area network (WAN) link.