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I built up a Kaby Lake desktop recently and installed a fresh copy of Windows 10 x64 pro with the latest build 1709. At least once a day now I've noticed the start menu/Cortana search become completely unresponsive when clicked on. I've resorted to pinning Command Prompt to my task bar to run shutdown commands to fix the issue until randomly it will break again. Has anyone else seen this issue? I only experienced it on unpatched Windows 10 machines and then usually it just goes away after it's been patched up.

I'm on a brand new installation of 1709 (Skylake) and haven't noticed this happening. My installation is only about two weeks old at this point.

That usually happens when Cortana becomes corrupt.

Try doing a hard reset of her.

Ryu Connor wrote:

That usually happens when Cortana becomes corrupt.

Try doing a hard reset of her.

Wait, so you're saying the Windows 10 Cortana goes bad and freezes up things just like the original?

For the first 18 months of Windows 10 release, I saw start menu / taskbar lockups caused by Cortana in so many different ways and in so many different environments that I thought Microsoft had just officially lost the plot. The fact that more than half the installs were independent installs that I wasn't even responsibe for, and had come from outside the corporate volume licensing channel just added to the theory that Cortana was broken for everyone.

It turns out there were two major oversights by Microsoft that have finally been put to bed:

1) Cortana broke if you use English (United Kingdom) language files instead of English (US).
2) Cortana broke if you disabled telemetry and used a local account. If she couldn't phone home with the usage data she scraped from you, tantrums!

I'm really getting used the idea that the OS is just SaaS now. I don't agree with it or like it, but I've come to accept that this sorry mess is all we have from Microsoft now.

Chrispy_ wrote:

I'm really getting used the idea that the OS is just SaaS now. I don't agree with it or like it, but I've come to accept that this sorry mess is all we have from Microsoft now.

With so much of what the average user does moving into the Cloud anyway, that isn't a completely crazy concept.

Interesting. Never had those issues, but I had added Cortana to the list of things I killed or disabled as much as possible. Nice to know it probably prevented some headaches.

I've been doing some digging around now that I have it happening on 3 computers which had clean installs of 1709. it appears when the start menu goes south the event log shows the windows shell experience is terminating due to a timeout. I tried a few things including a power shell command to re-install Cortana but no luck

Omniman wrote:

I've been doing some digging around now that I have it happening on 3 computers which had clean installs of 1709. it appears when the start menu goes south the event log shows the windows shell experience is terminating due to a timeout. I tried a few things including a power shell command to re-install Cortana but no luck

I assume you mean client machines? Three of your own would be a crazy coincidence (unless of course you're ticking some setting that is causing it). I'm still on the same 1709 installation I posted about earlier and everything is tip top for me.

I should note that I completely (as much as possible) disable any and everything Cortana from the get go. I don't even let it "get to know me" or whatever. That may be part of your issue (using Cortana, I mean). Heh.

DancinJack wrote:

Omniman wrote:

I've been doing some digging around now that I have it happening on 3 computers which had clean installs of 1709. it appears when the start menu goes south the event log shows the windows shell experience is terminating due to a timeout. I tried a few things including a power shell command to re-install Cortana but no luck

I assume you mean client machines? Three of your own would be a crazy coincidence (unless of course you're ticking some setting that is causing it). I'm still on the same 1709 installation I posted about earlier and everything is tip top for me.

I should note that I completely (as much as possible) disable any and everything Cortana from the get go. I don't even let it "get to know me" or whatever. That may be part of your issue (using Cortana, I mean). Heh.

Yeah, client machines as in three desktops. It is odd because I turn all that nonsense off during the setup process. Basically, all I'm doing is installing drivers, doing all the Win 10 updates, tossing chrome on, and slapping Sophos Home anti virus on. Then just through general use like 30 minutes of web browsing is when I've been noticing the failures

Omniman wrote:

Yeah, client machines as in three desktops. It is odd because I turn all that nonsense off during the setup process. Basically, all I'm doing is installing drivers, doing all the Win 10 updates, tossing chrome on, and slapping Sophos Home anti virus on. Then just through general use like 30 minutes of web browsing is when I've been noticing the failures

Have you tried removing the Cortana search box from the taskbar? Might be worth a shot at this point.

Chrispy_ wrote:

2) Cortana broke if you disabled telemetry and used a local account. If she couldn't phone home with the usage data she scraped from you, tantrums!

BTW, my very first install of W10 was of this nature (local + disabled telemetry) and I never had any issues over the 2+ years it was used. /shrug

I'll give that a go. I'm also trying a clean build on a different thumb drive just to make sure the one I was using didn't have some odd corruption happening. It's the only other thing I can think of since I ran all sorts of diagnostics when it first started happening and everything was fine hardware wise.

Another thing is the Windows Media Creation tool is failing to work these days. I had to use the wacky workaround where you force Microsoft to give you the ISO straight up by putting your browser in developer mode so it thinks you're on a Linux machine or Mac. As sad as it is that's what Microsoft is telling people to do rather then fix the client. I'm wondering if it's because the free upgrades are supposedly coming to an end in a few weeks.

Just circling back to make note that after the December 2017 monthly patches the issue resolved itself for the multiple computers. It used to be I would get maybe 15 minutes out of the computers but I lost the functionality. Now I haven't seen it in weeks thankfully!