No Cortana?

dalchina said:

How can you have no results for 'Hey cortana' in Settings? Suggests Cortana has been removed- have you ever tried to do that?

Before considering an in-place upgrade repair install, please create a new user for test purposes, log in as that user, and see if the things that are broken then work.

If they do, the problem is your user profile, not fixable with an in-place upgrade repair install.

Do you have Cortana here - when you open Settings?
Attachment 266206


Please be precise.

Do you mean
a. The command failed
b. The command succeeded, but no change.

Please post a screenshot of the command being run. Thanks.

Sorry, will try and answer each question

Nope, never even considered removing Cortana - I use it all the time actually. It was working until a couple of days ago I'd say.

Created new "Test" user, and that account is fine. So it's profile specific.

I do have Cortana in my profile:



I downloaded the reg key, applied it and restarted. No change.

dalchina said:

Thanks.

reg key???

Cortana
Code:
PowerShell -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted -Command "& {$manifest = (Get-AppxPackage *Windows.Cortana*).InstallLocation + '\AppxManifest.xml' ; Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register $manifest}"
- from the tutorial I cited.


Please also post a screenshot of what you see when you click Cortana in Settings (should be the Hey Cortana screen).

Then post a screenshot of Settings like this:


Do you have any idea what might have happened a couple of days ago?

Enable or Disable Cortana in Windows 10

Option 2.



Will try the Powershell code.

This looks identical?

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...1-19429cbf0a1e

- - - Updated - - -

And the only thing I can think of that happened a couple of days ago was:

Windows 10 search goes blank: PCs stop working properly because of strange Microsoft outage | The Independent

- - - Updated - - -

When I try the Command Prompt fix:



Not good by the looks of it...

dalchina said:

Good that search in Settings does work. (But puzzling it doesn't find 'Hey Cortana').

Do you have a System Restore point or disk image you can restore? (The routine use of disk imaging is tirelessly recommended here- e.g. Macrium Reflect - free-paid).
You mentioned a reg key- I never pointed you towards one, so have no idea what that might have been.

- are you saying you enabled or disabled Cortana?

Your OCR'd error for reference:


Have a look at your task manager, Details.
What is shown for Cortana or Searchui.exe?

Try booting to Safe Mode, then running that Powershell command in the same way.
Capture and post the result. (Remember, things may be different in Safe Mode so you may need to be creative)

Yep, you're right; backup image in the end. Life's too short. All is well now but I'll never know the cause...

Thanks for your support!

No bug as far I know, Definitely no Registry edits or Powershell command line stuff.

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