
The battery ran out in the middle of the update and voila! I was stuck with what I was sure was now a very expensive brick. A couple of years ago, I made the mistake of not checking to make sure my laptop was securely plugged in while Windows was undergoing a major update. On a single PC, use the local Group Policy Editor, gpedit.msc, to open the policy Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Search > Allow Cortana and set it to Disabled.Windows 10 is, on the whole, more trouble-free than its previous iterations - but sometimes, things just go wrong. On a system running Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise edition, you can use Group Policy to disable Cortana across multiple machines in an enterprise network. To prevent that, you need to make some administrative changes. Of course, anyone who can sign in to the PC can override that decision. With that option set, there's no Cortana icon on the taskbar meanwhile, the search box remains available as a way to search for local apps, files, and settings, as well as to carry out simple web searches with Bing, with results displaying in the search pane.

In Windows 10 version 2004 and later, the Cortana functionality is completely separate from Windows Search and is delivered as a Microsoft Store app. The legacy version of Cortana runs in Windows 10 versions from 1703 up to and including 1909 and is tied to the Windows Search feature. How you do that depends on which version of Windows 10 you're running. If the new Cortana is incompatible with your daily work, feel free to remove it, As with most things Windows, you can simply hide the feature, or you can remove it completely if you're really convinced you won't use it. (For details, see "Whatever happened to Cortana? Think corner office and a hefty raise.")

Today, Cortana's role has shifted to serving as a coordinator of meetings and appointments in organizations that run on Microsoft 365 Business and Enterprise. But over time, Microsoft removed most of the consumer-centered "skills" that Cortana uses. In Windows 10's early years, Cortana was a keynote feature.
