Is Cortana intended to be smarter on phones than on PCs? Or am I missing something?

[RUDY03]

Hey guys,
So I asked Cortana on Android, "How old am I?" and she replied with a very witty comment:

"My guess would be somewhere between 2 and 122. Either that or you're the oldest person in the world...Or an extremely gifted toddler."

I am yet to own a Windows 10 Mobile, and currently have access to only the Android Cortana aside from my PC. Now when I asked the same to My PC, she did a straight Bing Search. Not only this but there have been many such similar incidents. I am just too lazy to remember but my question is: Is Cortana supposed to be smarter on mobile phones than on PC? Or am I missing on some settings?

Remember: She can still answer some basic chat questions like "Who's your daddy?" or "Do you know clippy?" but some additional questions can only be answered on phones. Any help? All are absolutely updated, but I'm not into Insiders currently, so that's about it.

 

[Neemobeer]

I would assume it's the same code base, it may react differently if you have settings set differently. I disable Cortana on my devices, so perhaps someone else can provide you a better answer.

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

I can't help either as I'm on Android and iPhone and have been for several years. I missed the boat on getting the early Windows Phones as I didn't have the financial luxury of switching around between several types of phones. None of my IT buddies are any longer using Windows Phones with W10 or other; as most have all dropped them for Android or iPhone these days. My last friend with a Windows Phone had W8 on it about 4 years ago, and he switched over to Android. Maybe one of our other forum friends who does Smartphone testing for a Cell. phone provider or retail phone store could be answer your particular question? As neemo says, I disable Cortana on all my computers and most of my Customer's computers as they treat it like a fad thing, they try it once or twice and never use it again.

<<<BIGBEARJEDI>>>

 

[Qiana Estill]

I have pre-installed cortana in my acer laptop but it doesn't work at all. Where could i fix it? Or do I need to install an updated version?

 

[stueycaster]

I have pre-installed cortana in my acer laptop but it doesn't work at all. Where could i fix it? Or do I need to install an updated version?

My cousin bought a new Dell i5559 Signature Series laptop that Cortana didn't work on. The Signature Series comes with nothing but Windows installed. We tried everything to get it to work that we could find. We even called Dell Support and they couldn't fix it either. I finally did the fresh Windows install and that fixed it. It's been working ever since.

I know that's a drastic measure and a pain but it was the only thing that would fix it.

 

[stueycaster]

When I asked Cortana how old I am it said "I'll never tell". I'll never install it on my phone. I'm not really too crazy about it. It is pretty handy to find a something in the computer if I don't know where it is right off.

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

I have pre-installed cortana in my acer laptop but it doesn't work at all. Where could i fix it? Or do I need to install an updated version?

>>>It's important to know the EXACT version of W10 you have on your computer!! The thing we've noticed, is that many W10 computers are bought used or even Refurbished,(we don't know if you bought your computer new or used!), and they often have the 2 older versions of W10 which pre-date the W10 Anniversary Update from last Aug. 1st 2016. Older Pre-AU Windows10 versions such as v10240 and v1511 can become mucked up if the update coming into your W10 computer is the v1607 (Post-AU update). This newest update almost always causes W10 to crash and or malfunction, and should not be attempted. A Clean Install is the recommended method to convert your W10 version to post-AU. To check your computer for your W10 version, do this: use the keyboard on her computer and use <windows+logo-key and the R-key> simultaneously. This will bring up the Windows Run box. Type in the command "WINVER" into the Run box, and hit the <enter> key on her keyboard. This will bring up a small screen with the exact version of her W10. Please post that back here so we can identify which version you have. I'll post a pic of this for you below. This process only takes 5-minutes, and will help us to identify which version her Dell computer is running and then make specific recommendations to you for repair. There are about a dozen sub-versions of W10 v1607 now, and the latest is v1607 b14393.953.
Here's a pic of the WINVER command information screen:
Link Removed
To my knowledge there is not a separate version of Cortana available to download, as it's integrated into the Windows OS itself.<<<
Hope that helps!
<<<BIGBEARJEDI>>>

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

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>>>

 

[stueycaster]

There are about a dozen sub-versions of W10 v1607 now, and the latest is v1607 b14393.953.

There is a later version. This is what I have. I installed it 3-17-2017.

 

[RUDY03]

There is a later version. This is what I have. I installed it 3-17-2017.


View attachment 34619

Actually, yeah the latest is build 14393.970
I guess the best bid for @Qiana Estill would possibly be a fresh install of Windows 10.

 

[stueycaster]

In Settings/Update & Security/Recovery there is the option for a clean Windows Install. You can either save your files or wipe them. This is the most pain free method I've ever used.

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

@stueycaster & @RUDY03 : I guess mine is a little behind the absolute latest due to previous issues, and testing purposes I have WUDO turned OFF on my main desktop PC (I have 9 other W10 machines and it's off on most of them too). This is because I'm trying to avoid the CREATOR'S UPDATE from coming in on my Production machines, and only want to allow that on my TEST MACHINES. Thanks for pointing it out. In any case the suggested fixes to repair Cortana we gave above should work in most cases, even if they don't have the absolute latest and greatest push-update!

Good information, nonetheless!
Cheers.
<<<BBJ>>>

 

[stueycaster]

@BIGBEARJEDI. You probably know ways of fixing this that don't involve reinstalling Windows. I wish I did. Re-doing Windows is easy and doesn't require much knowledge. But then you have to reinstall everything after, which is a pain.

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

@stueycaster: Not so much with Cortana. Once she's broken, almost always you have to do a Clean Install; we saw this with the Tech Preview versions going back to 2014. By the way, after turning on my WUDO again, I was able to get my W10 updated to v1607 b14393.969 same as yours. Also, I usually keep my production machines a couple of versions back, as we found if you keep it at the absolute latest, you run into problems at least once or twice a month from weekly Tuesday push-updates. Not so much anymore, but it's better to be safe than have the latest update come into your daily driver machine and wreak havoc.

I can pretty easily recover since I always have the most recent 10 days worth of Macrium Image Backup files, and I can re-image in under 1.5 hrs.; but that too is a pain. So I am always a version or 2 behind the latest. Most of our Users don't know the difference, and getting them on a stable version of W10 is more important than getting them on the absolute latest version. While this may be important to Gamers, and System Builders, it's not important to the average home User, so I usually recommend that they turn WUDO off, or at least use the Intermediate setting to get updates from other machines in their home network (if they have multiple PCs), rather than including getting ALL updates from random PCs out on the Internet.

Cheers!
BBJ

 

[stueycaster]

Actually I don't think it's that big of a deal either. The only reason I'm on the latest is because when I installed the SSD and migrated the O/S it messed up my sound. So I did the Windows re-install and fixed it. If it wasn't for that I wouldn't have paid a bit of attention to it.

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

Agreed! I try to keep the latest and greatest versions on a couple of my Test machine setups like I said, since if an update scrambles one of my Test machines it's no big deal--certainly not as big of a deal if my daily driver PC gets whacked! Plus, my main W10 Test machine has like 5 drives in it (only 3 are hooked up most of the time) with different configs including dual-boots of Mint & Ubuntu Linux which I like to fool around with. We get lots of questions from Users running W10 & Linux versions in dual-boot; so I need to be able to play with those.

Separate topic; haven't seen you on the forum in a few years, have you been gone for awhile or just in other sub-forums??

Best,
BBJ

 

[stueycaster]

Separate topic; haven't seen you on the forum in a few years, have you been gone for awhile or just in other sub-forums??

Best,
BBJ

It's kind of a long story. When I was hanging around here back then I once helped Mike find a rogue script running in the forum. He was extremely generous with giving me a lot of points. I had one of the highest point counts of everybody. But the thing is I'm still just an average computer user though it looked like I should be more. I couldn't give the help to other users that I wanted to be able to and I felt bad about it.

Then I discovered smart phones and I started hanging out in the XDA Developers Forum. I spent time customizing my phones and helped some others with fixing up theirs. I actually started learning about customizing .apk's. It was fun.

But my wife developed Dementia and she kept getting sicker by the minute. Even though I was taking care of her I found time to invest in the phones. But then when she died I just couldn't get into anything for months. Now I've bought a new, wicked nice computer and now computing is fun again. So I'm hanging out here again. I've learned my lesson about trying to be "mister too cool" though. I'll just be one of the guys.

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

Thanks for your reply back. So sorry for your loss!
Glad to see you back again. And we look forward to working with you again.

BBJ