[UPDATE:Bugfix bricks USB, audio, and more] The Very Hungry Cortanapillar - Cortana eating 40%+ CPU usage with update despite tester warnings

[Euchre]

I shouldn't have to manually delete a folder or dummy an executable to shut off a surveillance process on my computer. Since Cortana and Search are now once again divided, why can't I just gracefully, by design, be able to shut down the process entirely as a part of disabling the use of Cortana? Uninstalling it completely would be nice too, but I can see where maybe, some day, it could become useful and effective. Alexa is a nosy hag, but at least she does things for me, like turn on or off my LED lights and pause and resume my DVR playback when I want to hit the bathroom. Come on MS, just give us a real option here!

 

Oh, and about that Tux and 'join the Dark Side' - light saber should be red if Tux is the Dark Side, not green.

[samcool55]

26 minutes ago, Nowak said:

Useless assistant eats up a lot of resources for no reason. Amazing.

 

The Windows Insider program is such a joke.

FTFY.

Seriously, I know there are systems out there with a weak CPU, using 40% will cause BIG problems for them.

And people wonder why I hate W10 and want to stick with W7.

It's always something with W10, since the release it has been plagued with issues and it just doesn't stop...

[MoonSpot]

32 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

I need to do a Windows reinstall on a client's PC next week. Is Cortana going to be crashing my party?

Master Chief couldn't escape her, yet you want to believe somehow you will?

[The King of the Undead]

3 minutes ago, MoonSpot said:

Master Chief couldn't escape her, yet you want to believe somehow you will?

I have already! I had help from tux.

[rcmaehl]

3 hours ago, Captain Chaos said:

If only the Windows team could write 2 lines of code without introducing 7 new major bugs ...

[Rainbow Dash]

Good thing I never had Cortona on in the first place.

[DrMacintosh]

Is thus just taking up a lot of resources on a particular core? Or is this pinning multiple cores for no reason? 

[Sauron]

5 hours ago, Pentorin said:

Why is Cortana still a thing? I get that some people can get slight use out of it but I personally have yet to find a reason to use Cortana over just manually doing the action myself.

For the same reason IE lasted as long as it did.

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

44 minutes ago, Sauron said:

For the same reason IE lasted as long as it did.

In that case they'd better get rid of Cortana ASAP.  They might save lots of lives.

 

[Sauron]

33 minutes ago, Captain Chaos said:

In that case they'd better get rid of Cortana ASAP.  They might save lots of lives.

 

Wait - what does the percentage indicate?

[rcmaehl]

1 minute ago, Sauron said:

Wait - what does the percentage indicate?

Internet explorer market share

[Sauron]

2 minutes ago, rcmaehl said:

Internet explorer market share

Ohhh right, got confused by the layout. probably reading too much into the meme though xP

[Animal901]

Lol..... you guys are ridiculous.... the post is synonymous with that old hootie and the blowfish song "hold my hand". Turn it off.... i cannot express how easy it was and how great my life has been not dealing with it. It has always been off.  As it should be. 

[LAwLz]

10 hours ago, Animal901 said:

Lol..... you guys are ridiculous.... the post is synonymous with that old hootie and the blowfish song "hold my hand". Turn it off.... i cannot express how easy it was and how great my life has been not dealing with it. It has always been off.  As it should be. 

Disabling Cortana is anything but easy though. 

It's easy to disable some things like the always listening, but to disable it completely is very difficult. 

[Trik'Stari]

20 hours ago, Princess Luna said:

Just kill Cortana? There's a really easy way to and you don't need it any more any ways... or at least I thought one of the points in 1903 was that Microsoft was untying Cortana from Windows Search once again (even though I have done it with Classic Shell years ago already).

Could you maybe link to some instructive literature on this subject, for those of us wanting to disable Cortana, but previously though it was impossible?

 

I could google it, but I like my information first hand when it comes to making alterations to my operating system.

[Doobeedoo]

That sucks, don't even have it though so I'm good. But really bugs like this shouldn't pass easily. 

[Arika]

She's finally going Rampant.

 

The fix is to just keep slapping her hand away when ever she tries to reach for the CPU.

[The King of the Undead]

36 minutes ago, Trik'Stari said:

Could you maybe link to some instructive literature on this subject, for those of us wanting to disable Cortana, but previously though it was impossible?

 

I could google it, but I like my information first hand when it comes to making alterations to my operating system.

linux!

[Arika]

40 minutes ago, Trik'Stari said:

Could you maybe link to some instructive literature on this subject, for those of us wanting to disable Cortana, but previously though it was impossible?

 

I could google it, but I like my information first hand when it comes to making alterations to my operating system.

@Delicieuxz has a guide in their signature for how to disable most of the annoyances of W10

 

 

 

[Princess Luna]

52 minutes ago, Trik'Stari said:

.

Of course! It's really simple:

 

Open Task Manager and locate the Cortana process, right click and "open file location".

 

Once you done that Windows will take you to the native folder of Cortana which is named as Microsoft.Windows.Cortana_cw5n1h2txyewy

 

Select the folder and attempt to add an .old to the end of the folder name, hit ok and it will fail because Cortana is still running:

 

But it's good to have this window so now you can go back to Task Manager and kill Cortana's process, this will give you about 2 seconds before Windows attempts to restart Cortana process in this time window hit the Try Again and it should successfully change the folder name.

 

Once done the .old extension will make Windows know the Cortana files are in there so it won't try to restore them through Windows Update in any way but at the same time the registry entries that tries forcing Cortana to restart won't find it since the directory has changed essentially killing it forever.

 

There you go Cortana will no longer be present on your system, do note that you'll need Classic Shell or be on Windows 10 1903 or later otherwise your Windows Search Bar will not work without Cortana!

 

-

 

Why not do the Registry Method listed above? Windows Update often will fix the entries restoring Cortana after a while.

[Euchre]

Princess Luna that sounds great, but if you then open Windows Event Viewer, is the log going to be a solid scroll of errors as Windows tries ad nauseam to restart Cortana? That might be as bad on CPU cycles as Cortana itself.

[Animal901]

 Everybody should stop using that search bar. Small taskbar buttons makes it go away. 

[Delicieuxz]

I run Windows 10 LTSC, which doesn't have Cortana in it by default.

 

You can get a copy of Windows 10 LTSC from eBay for cheap.

[AkatsukiKun]

I think at this point Microsoft has sullied the name Cortana, such a cool thing back then, now it's just a sad former shell it once was.

[mr moose]

MS really need to inform users that clicking "check for updates" is the equivalent of signing up to be a beta tester.