Windows 10 Have I disabled Cortana?

SSJ Keko

New Member
I'm having a bit of a weird experience.

Since people have said that Cortana can't be easily disabled after the anniversary update to W10, I decided to Google how to do it. In the first page I found, some symptoms of having Cortana enabled were listed, I noticed that I was suffering none of those. It then pointed me to some place in the registry, so obviously I went and opened my registry, and when I was just about to navigate to the right place (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Search) I found that I was already somewhere very similar (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Search) and that the place that I was supposed to navigate to was actually no where to be found.

Does this indicate that I've disabled Cortana already and simply don't remember doing it? Or is she still alive?

Also, I've got a related question from a friend of mine who hasn't touched W10 in like 8 months. "Why can't you just delete the [Cortana] program outright? Just write some zeros into the executable, or if Windows 10 keeps on repairing it with every update, can't you just make a batch file and put it in startup to delete it (or you can even setup a service to run as admin)?". Can anyone answer that?
 
I don't know about uninstalling it but it is not a program you can install or uninstall I can see. It does npot show up as a "Feature" you can enable and then disable in Programs and Features, "Turn Windows Features On and Off". Nor is it listed in "Services" In Admin Tools". However you can hide it by right clicking the taskbar anywhere, see "Cortana" and check "hidden" after name and it will disappear and stay so
 
You can really fully disable Cortana, since it also controls searching on your local machine. If you want to disable the web search add the following key if it doesn't exist
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Search

Add the following two registry keys
DWORD AllowCortana 0
DWORD DisableWebSearch 0
 
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