Uninstalled Cortana, Anyway to just get the search bar back?

TairikuOkami said:

Good old days, when I used nlite to optimize, I used to reinstall Windows like 2-3 times a week.
I have learnt, that disabling is the way to go, removing anything permanently is a way to reinstall.
I love to cripple Windows, but only the way, it is restorable without too much effort, like sfc scanning.
Like removing Cortana cripples Start, but sfc scan restores Cortana, so upon restart, it is all like new.

The Winaero uninstaller is brutal! The Packages/Dependencies list it dumps is endless!



My machine, however, remains functional. If you use 'search-ms:' with proper indexing, it works great!

Furthermore:
SFC, for me, always returns: "found corruption but unable to repair..."
and PowerShell always fails.

First off, thank you to everyone helping me out, il be sticking around this forum to give back, very good community.

Brink said:

Test using the tutorial below to see if you may be able to turn on showing the Cortana icon on the taskbar.

Hide or Show Search Box or Cortana Icon on Taskbar in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Customization Tutorials

No luck with that, the batch files killed my windows explorer and I had ctrl+alt+delete to restart. Also, I should mention the cortana bar is there, and I am able to change the display on it, but clicking on it simply does nothing. I can press the windows key to open up the menu, but cant type. (which is all I want)

dalchina said:

Winaero gave a big warning in the article used to uninstall Cortana:
Caution: Uninstalling Cortana breaks the Windows 10 Start Menu and probably Search so don't use this if you use the native menu. You will not be able to get it working back easily. You will not be able to-reinstall it quickly without using the genuine install.wim file. For most users, this means that Cortana will be removed from Windows 10 permanently. Think twice before you will continue.

If you're concerned about the 3-70Mb or so Cortana may use, leave it uninstalled and instead use Classic Shell - better search bar, and a tiny amount of RAM, and a fully functional start menu.Interestingly I noted before I hit Win key + S to launch Cortana (no search bar in the taskbar, Cortana's RAM use was under 5Mb. I'm used to seeing it around 40Mb.

Yea, should have read a little more. Learn from your mistakes huh? Now what exactly do you mean by the "Classic Shell?" I know what it is, but it is already installed or Windows 10 or is it 3rd party software? I found this. The only other way I know of searching (not counting 3rd party software) is with win key + r or searching in file explorer, which don't work to well at all compared to the regular search.

TairikuOkami said:

Running "sfc /scannow" restores Microsoft.Windows.Cortana_cw5n1h2txyewy's folder.

But if you have un-installed it using wim tweaks, you need to use powershell to restore it.

Ran the script.

Code:

Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files but was unable to fix some
of them. Details are included in the CBS.Log windir\Logs\CBS\CBS.log. For
example C:\Windows\Logs\CBS\CBS.log. Note that logging is currently not
supported in offline servicing scenarios.

I searched the log for "cortana" and copied everything into another file, here it is:

Code:

2017-04-01 01:58:08, Info                  CSI    000013c5@2017/4/1:06:58:08.455 Primitive installers committed for repair
2017-04-01 01:58:08, Info                  CSI    000013c6 [DIRSD OWNER WARNING] Directory [l:57 ml:58]'\??\C:\WINDOWS\SystemResources\Windows.UI.Cortana.Persona' is not owned but specifies SDDL in component Microsoft-Windows-Cortana-Persona-Resources, arch amd64, nonSxS, pkt {l:8 b:31bf3856ad364e35}

2017-04-01 02:44:10, Info                  CSI    000043b0@2017/4/1:07:44:10.722 Primitive installers committed for repair
2017-04-01 02:44:10, Info                  CSI    000043b1@2017/4/1:07:44:10.734 Primitive installers committed for repair
2017-04-01 02:44:10, Info                  CSI    000043b2@2017/4/1:07:44:10.751 Primitive installers committed for repair
2017-04-01 02:44:10, Info                  CSI    000043b3@2017/4/1:07:44:10.762 Primitive installers committed for repair
2017-04-01 02:44:10, Info                  CSI    000043b4@2017/4/1:07:44:10.773 Primitive installers committed for repair
2017-04-01 02:44:10, Info                  CSI    000043b5@2017/4/1:07:44:10.793 Primitive installers committed for repair
2017-04-01 02:44:10, Info                  CSI    000043b6@2017/4/1:07:44:10.804 Primitive installers committed for repair
2017-04-01 02:44:10, Info                  CSI    000043b7 [DIRSD OWNER WARNING] Directory [l:57 ml:58]'\??\C:\WINDOWS\SystemResources\Windows.UI.Cortana.Persona' is not owned but specifies SDDL in component Microsoft-Windows-Cortana-Persona-Resources, arch Host= amd64 Guest= x86, nonSxS, pkt {l:8 b:31bf3856ad364e35}


2017-04-01 02:44:10, Info                  CSI    000043b8 Error - Overlap: Duplicate ownership for directory \??\C:\WINDOWS\SystemResources\Windows.UI.Cortana.Persona in component Microsoft-Windows-Cortana-Persona-Resources, version 10.0.14393.0, arch Host= amd64 Guest= x86, nonSxS, pkt {l:8 b:31bf3856ad364e35}

Edwin said:

If you uninstalled Cortana the 'WinaeroWay', you're looking at re-installing Windows

I have hope!

dalchina said:

Classic Shell start menu is a free 3rd party start menu - very highly recommended. You can still use the Win 10 start menu too. CS start menu just works as you expect and is highly configurable. It behaves like Win 7 + Win XP start menus.

The search box can be used for any of internet, file, start menu searches and you can choose which. File searches use Windows indexed search.
Classic Shell - Start menu and other Windows enhancements

Here are the search options:


Please bear in mind that Cortana file search
a. is limited to what's indexed.
b. doesn't include any form of executable file.
c. requires extra clicks to select file search and which kind of file search (Videos, Music etc)
d. does not support regular expressions (?, * etc).

Just downloaded this and came here to post I found a solution. I had a hyperlink in my post above but it got removed somehow.
So far software looks great, this is just what I'm looking for. Cortana is gone and I still have a search bar! Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks everyone.

Cheers,
Gunner

Anyway to edit the thread title or add a "Solved" tag? Didn't see anything.

gunnerrrrr said:

Anyway to edit the thread title or add a "Solved" tag? Didn't see anything.

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