Windows 10: Search bar in start and explorer not working / not clickable

Hello guys,
I'm new on the forum since i just got win 10. I know there are plenty of posts about search bar problems but non of the solutions helped yet.

So the search stopped working completely so that i can't even click on the bar on either the task bar or in explorer, just nothing happens. The only things i was doing directly before is to try disabling cortana web search with some registry entries, which i deemed not related to basic search and restricting some privacy options but i don't think they can break the search.
the entry is:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Search]
"AllowCortana"=dword:00000000

i tried to change it back to 1 but still doesnt work after restart

After those i changed earlier it still worked:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search]
"BingSearchEnabled"=dword:00000000
"CortanaConsent"=dword:00000000

I tried this check with powershell Get-Process SearchUI | Stop-Process –Force
interestingly this gave an error with "no process found with name SearchUI"

So I tried a suggestion to reinstall cortana with
Get-AppXPackage -Name Microsoft.Windows.Cortana | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}
which seems to be successfull but has no effect on the problem.

other things i tried:
-windows troubleshooting
-windows search service is active
-rebuilt index
-sfc scan

so it seems to me the problem is with the SearchUI process, hopefully someone already has enough experience with all the search problems *Biggrin
thanks for reading!

:)

 

Start menu search items not clickable

This has been mentioned a lot and even though I'm constantly forced to update with a count down or scheduling reminder (I've seen posts of supposedly how to disable automatic updates however never had the time to investigate doing it myself but not happy
about how difficult the process is to disable it in W10P) I still don't see this problem getting addressed.

Problem: Search in start menu for random items result in un-clickable items. For example, type "remove" and the "Add or remove Programs" and "Uninstall a Program" options are listed at the top as one would expect but clicking on them does nothing.





Solution: Type "control" and the "Control Panel" option is listed and IS clickable. Then go to the sub option within the explorer control panel window.

Question: Why list items in the search result if they are not accessible? Is this intuitive? No.

Machine specific? Before suggesting this is a broken install it might help to know I can reproduce this on every W10 machine I've ever worked on of which exist in totally different environments, some were W8 upgrades...some were clean installs.

 

File Explorer Search Not Working


I am trying to search in File Explorer (Windows Explorer, My Computer) and it will not find anything. I can copy text from a name in the list and paste it in the search box and it still finds nothing. I have looked at the suggestions that have been posted and nothing I find that is relative to this works. Anyone have any suggestions? I am running Win 10 Pro on an I3 coustom desktop computer.

 

search does not work in task bar. DOES work in File Explorer

Task bar search does not work and I have tried all of the recommended steps. Had to recently reinstall Windows 10 64b (preserved personal data) and the search has not worked since.

Suggestions? Recommendations?

Thx