Joomla Virtuemart Search problem

after installing Virtuemart it seems I could not search for any products.  I could however search for 1 letter of 2 letters but anything over that return a '0 matches' message.

thanks to this post:
http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=62207.30

in the Joomla file libraries/joomla/databse/databse/mysql.phpI found a line which says:
$this->setQuery( "SET sql_mode = 'MYSQL40'" );
(around line 153).
UNDER this line I added:
$this->setQuery( "SET OPTION SQL_BIG_SELECTS=1" );

so it now reads:
$this->setQuery( "SET sql_mode = 'MYSQL40'" );
         $this->setQuery( "SET OPTION SQL_BIG_SELECTS=1" );
         $this->query();