Windows 10: Search on Task Bar Broken

So I see this is becoming a common problem, and I can safely say I've tried almost everything to fix it. The problem is I can type into the search on the task bar, but all that I see is a grey box with no results, which makes finding my fav programs very tough indeed. Thankfully I can scroll through the start menu to find the program and windows explorer search works fine.


Now if I create a new admin account, the search task bar works again, so this points to a corrupted/problematic user profile of some type but literally everything works except this windows 10 search task bar, so hoping someone knows where this corruption/problem exists so I can fix it, rather than creating a whole new account and moving everything to the new user account including all my managed windows credentials.


Would be nice if there was a way to simply remove the aspect that affects the search bar from the user profile and rebuild that aspect only. Hopefully a simple deletion of a few user keys in the registry?


Does anyone have any suggestions outside of the normal DISM, sfc, search troubleshooter, reboot, etc which I have all done to no avail. I also tried to restore to an earlier point in time when everything worked, but alas - the system restore failed which is a different problem.


Otherwise, I need to move over 1 TB of user data to the new profile - ugh!


So fingers crossed and listening.


Thanks Al

:)

 

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

 

Cannot modify Task Bar settings

Hi,

Thank you for posting in Microsoft Community.

I understand your concern and will be happy to assist you.

I suggest you to follow the steps below and check if the issue persists.

• Right click on the Task Bar.
• Uncheck the option " Lock the Taskbar."

Hope this helps.

 

Search Bar/Cortana

Hello,

Thank you for posting your concern here in Microsoft Community and welcome to the Windows 10 family.

From the description, I understand that you are still receiving the pop up notifications, despite having disabled the search functionality in windows 10.

Steps to disable the Search Bar

• Right click on the task bar.
• Select the "Search" option.
• Select "Disable."

However, if the above steps don't work out, perform the below suggested steps and check if it helps to resolve the issue.

Open a CMD window started as Administrator.

Repair corruption: Dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth.

Run this command next: Sfc /scannow

Now run these two commands:

PowerShell -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted

Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers |Where-Object {$_.InstallLocation -like "*SystemApps*"} | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}

Hope the above information was helpful.

Thank You.