Cortana - Cannot disable or stop

shipwreck · 02 Oct 2019

Hi all,
Cortana is running at 24% CPU - Power usage "Very high"
So far I have tried stopping/removing it by:
Using "O&O ShutUp 10"
Downloaded a "Disable Cortana Reg"
The Group Policy editor:
Edit group policy / Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / Windows Components Search.
Find "Allow Cortana" and double-click to open it. Click Disabled, and then hit OK. It is disabled! (NOT)

Starting in safe mode and going to: C: / Windows / systemapps And renaming it with .bak which I can't do.

Any other sugestions before I take a hammer to it & revert back to Windows 7?

Many thanks for reading.

dalchina · 02 Oct 2019

Hi, is your build 1903, and does this apply to you?
Microsoft Investigating Windows 10 Cortana High CPU Issues

Sadly it's not a forum requirement to state your build, so we have to ask time and again.

This issue appears to be a bug in the latest version of Cortana that occurs when users have disabled the ability to send local searches to Bing.

This has been resolved in later updates.

shipwreck · 03 Oct 2019

Thanks so much Dalchina, that fixed the problem. I will update my details to reflect my software version.
Roy

dalchina · 03 Oct 2019

pras92 · 16 Jun 2020

dalchina said:

Hi, is your build 1903,
This has been resolved in later updates.

I had the same issues, tried manually to alter regex, used HowToGeek's regex batch, tried O&O ShutUp 10. I was in v 1903 and updated to v1909 after seeing your response. Still cannot successfully disable Cortana.

elbmek · 16 Jun 2020

there is a link somewhere in here for a simple push button disable script. Dead easy and it worked for me.

shipwreck · 16 Jun 2020

Thank you!

elbmek · 16 Jun 2020

found it:

Enable or Disable Cortana in Windows 10

I used option 2 number 3

dalchina · 16 Jun 2020

And the way it SHOULD work (and certainly does for me) is that if 'Hey cortana' is disabled in Settings, Cortana uses no resources.

pras92 · 28 Jun 2020

elbmek said:

I used option 2 number 3

Thanks for the link. Can't try Option 1 as I'm in Win10 Home Edition, Option 2 doesn't work. I believe it's the same reg key trick that I tried previously from HowtoGeek.

dalchina said:

And the way it SHOULD work (and certainly does for me) is that if 'Hey cortana' is disabled in Settings, Cortana uses no resources.

The way I'm checking if I've successfully disabled Cortana is, i go to start menu, type news and i get online results like BBC News, in the right pane. And I'm still getting those online results.