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Last night I fiddled around with some settings, and now Windows 10 refuses to search my settings. If I search "Settings" it returns a result, if I search Notepad and Chrome - it works fine. But if I search "Activate" or "Update" or "Personalization" - it returns nothing until I press enter and wait a while. How can I restore the settings?

The settings I fiddle around were indexing settings. There's only one item checked now - "Start Menu", and the rest of the settings seem fine, but obviously something's wrong. How can I solve this?

Jack
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10 Answers10

6

I had one user account this was working for (User1|) & a newer one that it wasn't working for (User2). Copying the files from 

C:\Users\User1\AppData\Local\Packages\windows.immersivecontrolpanel_cw5n1h2txyewy

to

C:\Users\User2\AppData\Local\Packages\windows.immersivecontrolpanel_cw5n1h2txyewy

& then rebuilding the index in Indexing Options resolved the issue for me.

dezdez
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6

Ran into the same problem after upgrade from Windows 8.1 Pro. Since there is no official method to reset Indexing Options to the defaults, I just removed the corresponding registry branch. After the whole procedure, Windows restored the branch in its pristine state and the indexing resumed to work properly.

STEPS TO PERFORM:

  1. Stop Windows Search service:

    Win + R, services.msc, Enter

    Find the Windows Search entry, click on it, and choose Stop from the left column.

  2. Remove the following registry branch in its entirety:

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Search\CrawlScopeManager\Windows\SystemIndex

    You can use the free home edition of Registrar Registry Manager for this.

  3. Follow the step #1, but click Start instead of Stop this time.

The service will start and re-create the missing registry branch. This action will effectively set the Indexing Options to their clean default state.

The Control Panel (or Settings) items are now shown in the search results, immediately, but if you feel like to, you can set your own exclusions via the usual Indexing Options interface and even rebuild the index.

Neurotransmitter
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3

I think I've found the solution to this issue:

Run Lpksetup /u and uninstall any possible duplicate language you find there, restart Windows and wait a few minutes.

Edit: this worked for another user https://superuser.com/a/961510/485791

  1. Pin any of the Settings pages to Start.

  2. From Indexing Options, Advanced Options, click Rebuild to begin reindexing. Then restart Windows.

Community
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Diego Muñoz
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2

Don't know if it will help anyone else but I just got around this by pinning the Control Panel to the Start Menu and then re-indexing everything.

I then removed the Control Panel from the start menu and I could search the control panel from the start menu.

Jamie
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0

This is the only thing that worked for me:

Click on the Windows start button and locate Cortana. Right-click > More > App Settings. Click the 'Reset' button.

Bill
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0

I had this problem and it was solved by aligning the input and display languages. Until I applied this fix the search box in Settings would return no results, even if the Start menu search (Cortana) would return correct results (ie. the index was fine).

This appears to have happened because I had regional settings for Australia, display language English (UK) and input language English (US). By simplifying this setup to use English (US) for both input and display, Windows can now find search results in the Settings app. [NB: I have to keep Australia regional settings to avoid dates being displayed as M/D/Y and imperial measures).

I have upvoted the answer above which hints at this solution without directly giving it.

Nomadic
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0

Had this issue for a while and tried everything, what fixed it for me was following:

Disabling Bing search for the Start/Search box circumvents the problem.

  1. Open Regedit.exe and navigate to the following key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search

  2. Create a new DWORD (32-bit) Value, and name it BingSearchEnabled

  3. Leave the BingSearchEnabled value data to 0.

  4. Below BingSearchEnabled registry value, double-click the CortanaConsent value and set its data to 0.

  5. If the value CortanaConsent doesn’t exist, create it manually of type DWORD (32-bit). Exit the Registry Editor.

  6. Exit the Registry Editor, logoff and login back for the change to take effect.

Found the fix from winhelponline.com

iblandbara
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0

You cant uninstall Cortana if you want Search to work in Settings. It doesnt have to run, but it must be installed.

Windows 10 Settings not indexed has correct steps for reinstalling Cortana.

Rasz_pl
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0

Check if you have disabled indexing on your C: drive.

Also, in my case search didn't look into control panel until I simply pinned it to the start menu. That is search for Control Panel, right click it, select "Pin to Start".

Dmitry Shvedov
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-1

What language are you using? As I was using English (UK) and the control panel items led me to the settings program and the settings program was unable to search. On converting everything to English (US) - the same as my control panel indexing file (C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Packages\windows.immersivecontrolpanel_cw5n1h2txyewy\LocalState\Indexed\Settings) language - the indexing worked fantastically for everything.

Hope this helps as it worked for me after looking through forums with similar suggestions to those above.

Richard
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