C:Amie (not) Com!

This article discusses a fix for the Windows Search bar / Cortana not working after an in-place Windows 10 upgrade.

The Problem

Upgraded Windows 10 to find Windows Search Not Working? The symptoms may include:

1. Clicking on the search bar in the task bar does not launch the search user interface pop-up
2. Opening the Start menu and immediately typing does not launch the search user interface
3. When you click on the search bar in the task bar, Cortana momentarily appears on the ‘Apps’ tab in Task Manager and then exists
4. Clicking on the search bar causes SearchUI.exe to launch on the Details tab in Task Manager and then immediately exit
5. The search bar on the taskbar flickers, flashes on and off or even vanishes completely; leaving a display artefact.
6. The Events Viewer > Application log records the following event under Event ID 1000:

Faulting application name: SearchUI.exe, version 10.0.18362.1, time stamp: 0x5c90179d
Faulting module name: SearchUI.exe, version 10.0.18362.1, time stamp: 0x5c90179d
Exception code: 0xc000027b
Fault offset: 0x000000000015bf3e
Faulting process ID: 0xb50
Faulting application start time: 0x01d5229682a57780
Faulting application path: C:\Windows\SystemApps\Microsoft.Windows.Cortana_cw5n1h2txyewy\SearchUI.exe

In my case, the upgrade was from Windows 10 1703 to Windows 10 1903 and the user account was a Roaming profile (local profiles were all fine).

Am I the only person who is beyond fed-up with this nonsense? I digress…

Yes, no doubt you are equally frustrated with seeing Microsoft supports unhelpful and generic “run DISM’s Restore Health command followed by running SFC.exe /ScanNow“^[1]. Microsoft Product Support are just ignoring the problem and trying to encourage people for format the system by means of finding a zero-effort fix. This attitude helps no one.

The Windows shell is a mess. The Windows Modern App paradigm – while improved on 2015 – is still not in a fit state to be able to replace Win32. With these kinds of issues, is it any wonder that even in 2019 no one is writing Modern Apps? Microsoft themselves were forced to acknowledge this. Microsoft’s one success to encourage the use of Modern Apps has been to create a Win32 wrapper. Allowing Win32 programs to be released via the Windows Store. It says it all doesn’t it?

The Fix

As the search bar works fine for local users, the issue had to be profile, not system level (for anyone paying attention this rules out SFC /ScanNow and DISM).

Event Viewer tells us the application version involved as being “Microsoft.Windows.Cortana_cw5n1h2txyewy”. For a test user this happens to map within their profile to:

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.Windows.Cortana_cw5n1h2txyewy

I then proceeded to delete data from within the directory until search worked. The culprit was the contents of the Settings folder. Clearly between version 1703 and 1903, Microsoft have changed a lot here. There has not been any settings migration through Windows Store auto-update as “Cortana” (Windows Search) is only upgraded during feature updates.

 

Automating the Fix

If you are experiencing the same problem. I have put together the following PowerShell scripts to solve the issue on both a per-user and per-system basis. The script does the following

1. Searches for all Settings folders present beneath any version of Cortana on the system
2. Attempts to kill the SearchUI process, if present
3. Deletes the contents of the Settings folder and the Settings folder itself

The SearchUI process/deleted data will be restored the next time the search bar is clicked.

 

For the currently logged on user

$settings = dir $env:UserProfile\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.Windows.Cortana*\Settings
$settings | % {Stop-Process -Name 'SearchUI' -Force; Remove-Item $_.FullName -Recurse -Force}

 

For a named user profile

$profile = ‘joe.bloggs’

$settings = dir C:\Users\$profile\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.Windows.Cortana*\Settings
$settings | % {Stop-Process -Name 'SearchUI' -Force; Remove-Item $_.FullName -Recurse -Force}

 

For all users on the system

$settings = dir C:\Users\*\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.Windows.Cortana*\Settings
$settings | % {Stop-Process -Name 'SearchUI' -Force; Remove-Item $_.FullName -Recurse -Force}

 

Things to note

Working search bars will have file locks on the Setting folder. If you do not wish to see file lock errors messages use:

Remove-Item $_.FullName -Recurse -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue.

 

Deployment Options

Your options for deployment of the script(s) are:

1. Inject the script into a HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce entry for the system
2. Inject the script into a HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce entry for the user
3. Process the script as part of a logon script
4. Use SCCM to deploy the script as a SCCM Package to the system/user
5. Fire the script as a one-off/recurring Task Scheduler script via Group Policy
6. Execute the script at the end of your MDT upgrade task sequence