How do I enable Cortana after the Anniversary Update (1607)?

Question

The Windows 10 Anniversary Update appears to have killed Cortana. How do I bring her back?

The search screen is the old, standard one, and the search icon is a magnifying glass instead of the Cortana circle.

Cortana settings let me choose language but reports a region mismatch even though both are the same. There are no other Cortana-specific options there.

Answer 1

Thanks to a Microsoft Answers thread

The registry value BingSearchEnabled in the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search needs to be set to 1.

Run the following in cmd:

reg add HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search /f /v BingSearchEnabled /t REG_DWORD /d 1

Or use regedit to navigate to the same key and set the value.

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I suspect this specifically affects those who updated from a system where they had web search disabled. If you wish to continue using Cortana, apparently you must enable that option now.

Answer 2

I had the same problem here.

Get-AppXPackage -Name Microsoft.Windows.Cortana | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}

this powershell command worked for me.