MikeMecanic: I liked the old search function, as in Windows 8, where it was just a search function. If that's what remains when Cortana is turned off, I'm good with that. If I have two search...

That makes some sense. But isn't 23+ MB a bit much for a search feature?

There was no change after restarting. Cortana still shows up in Task Manager under "Background Processes" and continues to use up resources despite all those things being off.

Thank you for the response Brink. I have done both of those things. Cortana is still listed in Task Manager as using up memory.

No hate posts please. The idea of Cortana is great. Especially from a nerdy "my computer is a lady and can talk to me" standpoint. I dig that. But realistically, I'm not going to make use of...

Uninstalling and reinstalling Charter/F-Secure security suite did the trick. Glad it was such a simple solution. Thank you for the advise and comments

After accidentally updating to Windows 10 (If you want to know, I was trying to set it up to install a month or so later, but accidentally clicked the "install now" option. It must have been...