How to start Cortana

cortanawindows 10

As I knew that the Cortana process always respawns, I killed the Cortana task from Task-Manager. Surprisingly it didn't restart by itself.

Now I have the following problems

  • My start menu takes ~1.5 Seconds to show up every time!
  • I could type stuff in the start menu and it would start searching. Doesn't work anymore.
  • The Cortana and Search-Settings are gone from the control panel! I can search for it with the search bar and it will show me "Cortana & Sucheinstellungen" as a result, but clicking on the result won't take me to the Cortana settings.

How do I solve (at least) the first two problems?
How do I start the Cortana process again?
(A restart doesn't fix this!)

Edit:
I found SearchUI.exe in C:\Windows\SystemApps\Microsoft.Windows.Cortana_cw5n1h2txyewy and executed it, but that didn't work.

Edit 2:
It turned out that I had a trojan. Windows Defender removed it for me and after a restart Cortana is back again.

Best Answer

You can turn on Cortana by opening search on the taskbar, going to the "Settings" section of the left panel, and sliding the pill switch to the "On" position. You can also do it via the "Settings app > Privacy > Speech, inking, & typing" and clicking the "Get to know me" button.

Since your system experiences various anomalies, you may to revise is there are services that fail to start. (start services.msc - check the ones set with startup type to automatic, they should state started; if not, that could mean they failed to start for some reason).

UI start: explorer.exe shell:AppsFolder\Microsoft.Cortana_8wekyb3d8bbwe!CortanaUI

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