How To Enable Typing Into Search Field (Cortana field?)

I now find, to my great surprise, that I can't type in the Search field at bottom left. The cursor will go there but nothing will happen to it when I start typing.

This is amazing. This computer. Endless problems. I have two computer each with win10 and each installed at about the same time. One just trucks along beautifully with almost never a problem and the other one - this one - seems never to be without a problem.

I just posted about a rebooting problem I just fixed today..... and now, half an hour later.... I find this Cortana or Search field thing....

amazing. :)

Any ideas what I could do about it?

yeah, that was a big mistake, eh? sorry. I never do that. I should. Obviously. I will. I hope... I think... :)

later edit:

for the sake of future followers of this thread looking for answers.

No answers in the above links.

One leads to a dead link.
One is just 'you could try' without a reported full success
One is try pasting commands into powershell or such and is without reported definitive cure
One says disable cortana and finishes with a guy saying cortana will turn into an ordinary search and that'll freeze, too.

p.s. disk imaging and restores: no, I haven't resorted to them yet. Can't keep going to them for every little thing and in my case I've just done a restore a while ago - the seeds of this problem are probably right there in it.



If I find a fix I'll make a further edit and spell it out.

So neither the Search field nor the Cortana Search field work?

Nope. Neither of those does anything for me.

That question: so neither the search field nor the cortana search field work? I didn't even know there were two.

I'm referring to the white field very bottom very left of the computer.

I get all kinds of weird goings on. I can sometimes type a bit in there and then suddenly it stops. I click in there to start typing and this ugly black rectangle pops up which is Cortana asking if there's anything it can do for me. Sometimes that doesn't come up - like just then when I tested - instead a kind of empty rectangular frame comes up. Sometimes my browser window gets involved in it and everywhere i move my browser window the overlaid rectangle frame goes with it...

I think the best thing is probably a reinstall that keeps apps or an upgrade.

I want a definitive fix but of course such things are rare in computers because so many different things can make for certain behaviour. A fix for one computer isn't a fix for another.

Things get marked as 'fixed'. But that's his fix for his problem. Really. Not 'the fix'.

Still I look for definites. I think. Is what goes on with me. Like start from a known place. Like when you install an app. You know the app is good. Proven to work on that platform. So if it doesn't work don't bother looking in the app, the problem's in the platform.

Definite starting place. Not like that right now is it.

I have some pics, screenshots of the weird goings on. I've put them on imgur rather than trying to add them in here. I don't know which you'd rather I did.

Search Box/Cortana Hassles. - Album on Imgur

Hmm. That was a good idea. So I tried it.

Unfortunately didn't work.

It did something though. Now I find I get my start menu up but when I try to move over there, scroll for something, it disappears !

I'm thinking I need this update, I'm told I do.

So why not just go for it?

I thought updates were done automatically all the time - I've seen it happening time after time - wait for shutdown while it updates - wait on bootup... whatever..

So why isn't this machine being updated I wonder?

Anyway, would that be a good move for me - just to manually update it to the latest version ?

Yep, that 'reset' trick was linked to in that previous post. I did it and it hasn't fixed things.

Checked my update history. Yes I'm on 1803 and my last updates were on 11/10 and 10/10 and were KB4100347 and KB4462919 respectively.

I wonder if there's a trick to enable cutting a pasting those settings info things, like that history there? Or should it happen anyway and that's just my machine again?

I just tried to turn cortana off. Found a page offering two ways: How to turn off Cortana and stop personal data gathering in Windows 10 | Windows Central

First one start Cortana then in settings switch off. No good to me. I can't type in the field to start it from there.
and by pure fluke I was able to type in the field and start it a few minutes ago. A freak. Went to settings, clicked cortana, no such switch.

Next one settings/privacy/stop getting to know me. No such options found on my machine.