any IT experts out there

I need some help, not sure what I'm looking for on the interweb.

I have a server with approx 4,000 folders and sub forders. What I think I need is some front end software to work as a search engine to identify the folder or folders with files contained in them. All the foldes have specific names. at the moment I have to go to explorer and scroll through the folders. Thats fine for me but I want my clients to be able to just search with out having to go into the server.

Any ideas

I would look at open source community projects (they are free) a search engine such as terrier may do what you desire by the sound of it.
Personally I would run it on a posix system (Unix, Linux, BSD, OSX) as they generally utilise resources more effectively than Windows boxes.
With open source projects you have the code as such can alter the application to suit your requirements.

http://www.terrier.org/

Not sure exactly what you need, but I made a basic VB code at work with one procject that scans every single folder and subfolder and file in a given location and prints out a list with each of those with a full path and filename.

So your clients could perform a search within the list instead of searching through the server.

Would that be of any help?