This is just really random and very dumb on my part. For the longest time ive been using a grep function for windows until today. Have you ever noticed from xp on up that the search function built into windows also has a search "word or phrase in the file"? It will do multiple files as well. Its one of those things that, like me, probably have never noticed for years.

I've used the windows search feature to search inside files, but I still find grep to be much more useful with its regular expressions and output features.

yes, I have used the windows find to look for files that contained some text for
years. Though for coding I tend to use the IDE's (MSVC++'s developer studio)
'find in files' feature as it does support regular expressions, and I can then just
click on on output line and have that file opened to that line with ease.

Sadly I use Win7 and Win7's search inside files sucks. It won't search inside non-indexed files.