This Post addendum to my
Post #7 above is for anyone else having difficulties with their Cortana on PCs, Laptops, or Tablets. As you can tell, it's
VERY IMPORTANT to know 2 things about your Computer with the Cortana problem.
(1.) Did the Computer come with W10 on it new from the factory when you bought it, if you purchased it new, and
(2.) What version of W10 do you have
EXACTLY? As there are 3 major versions and probably 2 dozen sub-versions of W10 within those 3 major versions (
v10240, v1511, and the current v1607).
Once you provide us with those 2 pieces of information, we can better assist you on what steps to take. Each of us has their own methods of repairing W10 problems such as Cortana malfunctioning. However, most of us here agree that if the common repair steps such as built-in Windows repair utilities such as
CHKDSK, SFC (System File Checker), and
DISM cannot repair the issue, and you have taken the time to run antivirus scans with your AV program and
MALWAREBYTES antispyware and cleaned out all your viruses, almost certainly a
CLEAN INSTALL of W10 is the best way to fix the problem.
W10 has significantly changed how apps such as Cortana works, as they are embedded in the Windows OS (Operating System) and cannot be installed, uninstalled, re-installed such as apps such as Calculator, Solitaire, Notepad, etc. in much older versions of Windows that you may be familiar with or even still using on computers in your household. That harkens back to the
W2k, XP, and Vista days when these utilities were separate stand-alone programs. When corrupted or damaged by other misbehaving programs, or virus attacks, they could easily be removed and then reinstalled from a copy on another working Computer having the same Windows version; such as the
Notepad utility on an XP computer that wasn't working could be copied from a different XP computer that was working with
Notepad, and overwritten, reinstalled, etc. to correct the problem with the app or program.
This post isn't intended to chide anyone for not keeping up with the latest developments in Windows technology, simply stating that significant changes have taken place in Windows in the last 17 years, almost 2 decades now. So people using older Windows versions migrating to W10 are not necessarily aware of all of these tekky changes, as most people are not concerned with that from an everyday home user perspective. They are more concerned with where the Solitaire app went to (it's gone in W10, you have to download it now!
), or how to look at all of your installed programs in one place, or how to change the date/time of your system. In most cases, these things are still there (with a few exceptions), but they are in different places now. Those changes are surface-deep changes, they don't address the down-deep changes made in the OS itself. The embedded-Cortana is one of those things. Hopefully, this will clear things up a bit. And remember if we don't have the 2 pieces of information above, it becomes much more difficult for us to craft a custom solution that will fix the problem on your specific computer.
Best,
<<<BBJ>>>