Cortana's Broken. Help, Please

When I click in the search box down in the Task Bar brings up The Cortana Window. Typing frequently brings up anything but what I'm asking for. Space bar will make it close completely and sometimes disappear from the Task Bar. Sometimes it closes while typing. Click in the bar further over and it will come back. Restarts and a complete shutdown & start up have had no effect. Reliability Monitor simply says Cortana Stopped Working. No Solutions are available.

Here's the sequence of this mornings events:

Successfully download and install the 2017-05 Cumulative Update for Windows 10 Version 1703 for x64-based Systems (KB4020102), without incident.

Check the Store and download and install update to the MS Solitaire Collection.

Run Disk Cleanup. Removing the leftover Windows Update files.

I ran the same update on Gayle's laptop without the Store update and cleanup. Cortana is still working there, but not now on this machine.

Windows Defender, Malwarebytes, and AdwCleaner all come up clean. Cortana is not listed in the "Apps & Features" list, so the Reset Apps Tutorial won't help. I'm at a loss, and really apprehensive (nice word for scared) about any of the Windows Reset, Repair, Refresh routines. Remember, I really do not know what I'm doing. Frustration is mounting and that's not helping.

Can someone please help here?

Not sure where to tell you to start but I would suggest you check your setting and turn off any voice activation just in case it might be picking something up from the background:

Hey thanks. Just went thru all that and it was/is now off. One thing, clicking in the search box at the bottom doesn't bring up the empty result window. It's either the Home page with various things offered. Let's try something else?

I'm not really sure what you mean because I normally don't use Cortana but here is what I get when I click in my search box:



Show me what you see.

It goes off when I try to do a Snipping Tool capture. BTW, forgot to mention SFC /SCANNOW found no integrity violations.

WOW, it looks like you are getting a view for a cell phone but I'm not sure. Do you have bluetooth and/or are other devices somehow paired or connected to you PC?

For example, I made the mistake of plugging my android tablet into my laptop for charging and I start to get (offered) Windows 10 mobile updates. I reloaded a system image to stop those offers.

Anyway, I don't know why yours is different but I am sure someone else around here will know... now that they can see what you are getting.

I'm off for the afternoon.

Good luck,

WOT

Bluetooth not enabled. Only for the MS mouse on Gayle's laptop. That screen came up from either clicking on Home or Notebook in Cortana. Haven't figured out how to get rid of it.

thanks for your time and efforts.

Getting worse. English isn't on the list for languages in Cortana and the same thing is happening when I type in the Search box on the Settings pages.

The more I tried to figure out what was going on with Cortana, the issue was spreading even into the Search Box at the top of the Settings pages. An Uninstall of the update seems to have solved all but one of the problems, as far as I can tell. Only remaining issue is Cortana's initial Home Page display, seen in Post #5. If I can't figure how to make this return to normal, I can live with it. For now I think this one may well be resolved. Will mark is as such after a little time passes without incident.

Question now is, am I going to get this KB4020102 Update again? If not what's the consequences of that?

Next thing, How do I turn on Location For Cortana? It's greyed out



And I can't find what needs to be set to turn it's location setting on.

Again, can someone help?