Cortana in education removed...Can it be re-enabled?

maxatv said:

Hello I'm running windows 10 education and the anniversary update wrecked two things I regularly use

RDP ( fixed now they updated app version last night )

Cortana...yes I know i'm weird right now all people want to do is disable her but I used it alot. Only in education its been disabled, is there a way to turn it back on. I've looked in registry and there are a bunch of flags not present in any i've found searching for an aswer. Your help is greatly appreciated!

Unfortunately, it appears MS has removed it from Educational release. Read here about 1 page down...

Windows 10 Education

Windows 10 Education builds on Windows 10 Enterprise and provides the enterprise-grade manageability and security desired by many schools. Windows 10 Education is effectively a variant of Windows 10 Enterprise that provides education-specific default settings, including the removal of Cortana¹. These default settings disable tips, tricks and suggestions & Windows Store suggestions. More detailed information on these default settings is available in Manage Windows 10 and Windows Store tips, tricks and suggestions.



Windows 10 editions for education customers

She may be there so you can upgrade editions from Education to Enterprise? I can go from Home to Pro with a product key change. No install media needed, the files/features are already there and unlocked. I can go from Pro to Education with a change product key too. Enterprise to Education too which surprised me. I have no idea if you can go from Education to Pro though? I haven't tried it. Any of these edition changes require a valid product code or digital entitlement, or they won't activate.

alphanumeric said:

She may be there so you can upgrade editions from Education to Enterprise? I can go from Home to Pro with a product key change. No install media needed, the files/features are already there and unlocked. I can go from Pro to Education with a change product key too. Enterprise to Education too which surprised me. I have no idea if you can go from Education to Pro though? I haven't tried it. Any of these edition changes require a valid product code or digital entitlement, or they won't activate.

That's very likely. With some minor exceptions, all the code is there, just disabled. Like Win 7 Pro ---> Win 7 Ultimate, just pop in a key. All the necessary components may not already be there and will DL on activation. That's probably why he's seeing the reg keys and some of the files....just the backbone stuff.

f14tomcat said:

That's very likely. With some minor exceptions, all the code is there, just disabled. Like Win 7 Pro ---> Win 7 Ultimate, just pop in a key. All the necessary components may not already be there and will DL on activation. That's probably why he's seeing the reg keys and some of the files....just the backbone stuff.

I've done the Home to Pro with no Internet Connection and didn't get any prompts for install media. I haven't bothered to unplug when going from say Pro to Education or Enterprise. It happens pretty quickly and as far as I can tell nothing was downloaded. Not from what I saw on screen anyway. As always YMMV. My installs were done with my MSDN ISO's, not sure if the MCT ISO's are different.

Cortana was installed and enabled when I upgraded from the AU to CU. I didn't have to do or change anything. Cortana is now included in the Education version.