4

I uninstalled Cortana because I found it was an annoying feature that bothered me more than it helped me. After uninstalling it though I realized that some other windows features such as the search option disappeared with it, which is why I want it back.

I used this method to uninstall it - http://winaero.com/blog/how-to-uninstall-and-remove-cortana-in-windows-10/

It seems to have completely removed all Cortana files, which is why all other options of installing/re-installing it that I have found don't seem to work. If instead of adding it there were a way of just getting the search option back I would appreciate that also.

ChrisJThomas
  • 41

2 Answers2

1

You have managed to completely break your Windows installation, and this might not be fixable without reinstalling windows from media.

However, you may be able to fix this without a reinstall if you have another Windows 10 computer with Cortana installed.

  1. Download sxsextract
  2. Run cscript.exe sxsextract.vbs /online ""C:\Windows\servicing\Packages\Microsoft-Windows-Cortana-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~en-US~10.0.14393.0.mum" Cortana.cab on a computer with Cortana installed. The path may be different, just look around.
  3. On the broken machine, run dism.exe /Online /Add-Package "/PackagePath:/path/to/cortana.cab" as admin.
  4. Hopefully, your computer is now functional. If not, repeat steps 2-3 with any other file in the \Windows\servicing\Packages directory with "Microsoft-Windows-Cortana" in the name. You can also try adding the command line switch /vicioushacks to the command used in step 2.

Good luck!

Cheese Lover
  • 113
-1

Reinstall Windows 10 using Media Creation Tool, selecting the option to keep all data.

Toma
  • 111