Finding Files on Windows

08 Aug 2026

I am not a Windows native. It is a foreign land. The only time I use Windows is to play a game, and so my usage looks like this: turn on computer, log in, open Steam, select a game, click green button. That’s it.

Recent events, however, have set me on a path to try to find save files for The Sims which have gone missing because OneDrive accidentally got turned on for the account in question.

Powershell

Get-ChildItem -Path C:\ -Filter *.save -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | Select-Object FullName

or

Get-ChildItem -Path "C:\Start\Search\Here" -Filter "*.save" -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | Select-Object FullName, DirectoryName

What the Command Does:

• Get-ChildItem: This is the core command, equivalent to ls or dir.
• -Path "...": Specifies where the search should begin.
• -Filter "*.save": Tells it to only look for files ending in .save.
• -Recurse: This is the key. It tells PowerShell to search through all subfolders within the starting path.
• -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue: This prevents the script from stopping or showing errors when it hits a folder it doesn’t have permission to access (like system folders).
• | Select-Object FullName, DirectoryName: This pipes the results to a selection command, which neatly outputs two columns: the full path of the file and the directory it was found in.

Command Prompt

dir C:\*.save /s /b

How to Use It:

1. Open Command Prompt.
2. Navigate to the root directory you want to search from using cd (e.g., cd C:\Users\YourName).
3. Run the command above.

What the Command Does:

• dir: The directory listing command.
• /s: Recursive search. This tells it to look in all subdirectories.
• /b: Bare format. This outputs only the file path and name, without extra headers or summary information.

Limitation: This command is less clean than PowerShell’s output; it will just list the full path for every file found.