Sep. 05, 2018 / Updated by Bessie Shaw to Windows 10
Windows taskbar search problems are never free from Windows 10 common errors, the typical phenomenon like can’t type in Windows 10 Search Bar, Windows search not working on Windows 10 or Windows 10 Creators Update, Cortana search not working, taskbar not working etc. Luckily, there are workable solutions to fix those annoying Windows search bugs. Below are 5 top ways for your reference.
Method 1. Use Windows PowerShell to Fix Can’t Type in Windows 10 Search Bar Issue
Windows PowerShell is a handy built-in tool to fix many common Windows errors. Follow below steps if you encounter the Windows 10 search problems like can’t type in Windows 10 search bar, Start menu not working after Windows 10 Creators Update, Cortana search not working, Microsoft Edge, Action Center and other more Windows components no responding cases.
1. Press the Windows shortcut keysWin + X to bring out the Command prompt (admin).
2. Type below commands one by one and hit Enter.
PowerShell -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted
3. Enter the following commands after the PowerShell window pops up and then hit Enter.
Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers |Where-Object {$_.InstallLocation -like '*SystemApps*'} | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register '$($_.InstallLocation)AppXManifest.xml'}
4. Close the PowerShell window and then check whether you can type in the Windows search or not. If the search box not working bug persists, please try solution 2.
Method 2. Re-install Windows 10 Apps to Troubleshoot Windows Search Bar Not Working Error
1. Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc altogether to launch the Task manager and open a new PowerShell window with administrative privileges.
2. Click File ->Run New Task (Tick the “Create this task with administrative privileges” prompt) and then type Powershell.
3. Type the following in the Powershell prompt:
$manifest = (Get-AppxPackage Microsoft.WindowsStore).InstallLocation + 'AppxManifest.xml' ; Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register $manifest
4. Close the Powershell window and then reboot the computer to see if it helps to resolve the glitchy Windows search bar on Windows 10.
Method 3. Fix the Language Bar to Retrieve the Windows Search Box
According to some users who have got stuck in Windows search not working after Windows 10 Creators Update or can’t type in Windows 10 search box malfunction, the missing language bar may the culprit, causing the Windows 10 taskbar search problems
1. Press Win + R to open the Run command.
2. Copy or type the command 'C:Windowssystem32ctfmon.exe' in the Run box and then click Enter to bring back the language bar.
Then the language bar should be back and you can type in Windows search, Start menu, Cortana search and use them to find Windows 10 apps as normal as before.
Method 4. Modify Windows Search Service to Resolve Windows 10 Search Not Working Bug
To modify the Windows Search service, below is how.
1. Launch the Run command.
2. Type services.msc into the Run box and then hit Enter.
3. On the right pane, press the W key to locate the Windows Search and then double-click it.
5. If the service shows stop status, then click the Start button.
6. Select the Automatic from the drop-down menu of the Startup type under the General tab.
7. Click the Apply and then OK tosave the changes.
Method 5. Restore to the Previous Build to Tackle Can’t Type in Windows 10 Search Bar Issue
If all the above efforts come out of no luck, you may consider recovering your previous build to tackle the useless Windows search bar glintch.
1. Press Win + I to open Settings.
2. Click Update & Security >Recovery >Advanced startup >Restart now >Troubleshoot.
3. Choose the Go back to the previous build option.
Here you can select the exact Windows version you want to revert back and follow the on-screen instructions to roll back to Windows 10/8.1/8/7 to fix the Windows 10 taskbar search box can't type in hitch.
See Also:
That’ all! Hope the above solutions could help to dispose of can’t type in Windows search bar or unresponsive Cortana search issues. If you find more tricks on fixing Windows 10 taskbar search bugs on Windows 10, share with us in below comments section or go to the OStoto official forum for further discussion.
This question already has an answer here:
I have problem with Windows 10 Enterprise N x64.When I press 'Start' and start to type application name it never finds it.
I can't even find applications like 'Calculator', 'Microsoft Word' or any other. Just moving dots and I let it run for 30 minutes without any success.
PS. There is chance that this will not work for you if you did upgrade instead of clean install of Windows 10. But you can always try.
This are my indexing options.
stevenvh
74333 gold badges1212 silver badges2727 bronze badges
HoochHooch
2,21144 gold badges1515 silver badges2020 bronze badges
marked as duplicate by Journeyman Geek♦ windowsOct 10 '17 at 8:48
This question has been asked before and already has an answer. If those answers do not fully address your question, please ask a new question.
13 Answers
I have no idea why or what I have broken in the process.But here is what worked for me.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExplorerFolderTypes{ef87b4cb-f2ce-4785-8658-4ca6c63e38c6}TopViews{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}
This is one of many answers posted here. Feel free to try other people's suggestions. If you combine all answers in one I'll accept your answer.
Method for Creator's updateCheck out this answer.
HoochHooch
2,21144 gold badges1515 silver badges2020 bronze badges
Found a solution here: Cortana not finding Desktop apps when searching for them
Here is the relevant part:
I reinstalled Cortana using the following procedure:
After 30 seconds the problem was solved on my machine. Incredible.
RAnders00
24211 gold badge22 silver badges2121 bronze badges
Augusto BarretoAugusto Barreto
2,32211 gold badge1010 silver badges1111 bronze badges
Disabling the 'Let apps run in the background' toggle on the 'Background apps' page of the new Windows Privacy settings causes start-menu search to break, at least on Windows 10 with the Creator's Update!
I recently reinstalled Windows 10 with the Creator's Update on three machines. After installing Windows, my first step on all of the machines was to click through all the pages under Settings ->Privacy, disabling every single toggle. Included among these was the 'Let apps run in the background' setting on the Background apps page.
Soon, thereafter, I noticed that newly installed applications would not show up in the start-menu search - either through
win+S or by simply starting to type when the start-menu had focus. On all machines, some results would show and others would be missing. Newly installed stuff would not show. On one, typing google or chrom would yield nothing but the full word, chrome , would show 'execute command'. At one point, one machine would only complete notepad and the result could not be clicked or activated.
This thread helped me to learn that creating a new local-administrator user on the machines would temporarily solve the issue - thanks! Unfortunately, the problem would ocurr again and so I started trying to track down when, precisely, it started happening. I did this with a process involving many, many restarts and repeatedly installing and uninstalling 7-zip.
I was pleased to discover that my registry hacks that disable Cortana's web-search and windows-store search were not responsible - they were my first guess. Hacking out other parts of Windows didn't break the search; neither did my power-shell script that uninstalls all the bloatware that ships with Windows 10: Facebook, Twitter, XING, Keeper, the list goes on. (This stuff is also automatically reinstalled, repeatedly, and reinstalled for new user accounts.)
Finally, I tracked the problem to this privacy setting - another thing that is user-account specific!
My tests show that you can still disable all applications from running in the background as long as the primary toggle at the top of the 'Background apps' page remains On. Here's a screenshot of my settings with start-menu search working:
All the rest of the privacy toggles can be switched off, on all the other pages.
And, lastly, it seems that if the 'Let apps run in the background' toggle is Off, turning it on again and restarting appears to repair the start-menu search although it seems to take a while before the results are 100% again.
Of the solutions listed on this question, only the suggestion to create a new local user account worked and that only until I once again switched off this problematic toggle.
If you don't see the let 'apps run in the background' toggle, you can still enable it via the registry. To do so;
49811 gold badge44 silver badges1919 bronze badges
XharlieXharlie
For those who make their way here, but for whom the accepted answer doesn't work, I got this type of application searching to work with the following steps:
It may take a few minutes for everything to start working the way you're hoping for.
Karim TempleKarim Temple
I had the same issue. My solution for this was to go to Indexing Options, chose Advanced, then choose to bertieb
Rebuild the index . That fixed it right away.
5,8111111 gold badges2929 silver badges4444 bronze badges
ziptieziptie
How I solved my problem:
The service
Windows Search was disabled somehow, I believe I have disabled it using msconfig without knowing about the consequences.
However, try to run
services.msc and make sure Windows Search is enabled and started. You should see the result immediately.
Good luck!
ErcksenErcksen
I am just adding a summary based on my own experience.
Augusto's answer works for me but only temporarily. Just reinstall cortana. Go to powershell and type
After a while the stuff went the way it used to be. Sometimes, if I type zend, zend studio will show up. Sometimes not.
I am also using one of the comment as another answer in case that didn't work for you.
I found that if you go to
C:ProgramDataMicrosoftWindowsStart MenuPrograms and open the shortcut 'Search', it opens the 'Search Everywhere' feature from Win 8, and there all the apps appear, so it has to be a bug in the new search UI of win 10, and not in the indexing options. I just wish that 'win + s' could open 'Search Everywhere' instead of Cortana. – Augusto Barreto Aug 11 at 17:52
That is written by augusto again. BOTH of this works for me.
I did rebuilding index and other solutions. That didn't work or only work temporarily.
Thanks Augusto. I think I should add my own answer so everybody knows which solutions work in my case and probably on their cases either.
Sharen EayrsSharen Eayrs
27111 gold badge33 silver badges1212 bronze badges
Local administrator account was the issue
I was building a Windows 10 Pro SOE based on x64 1607 when I came across the start menu search not finding any applications.
To be specific, as stated above in a couple posts, i could find default pre-installed applications but not anything new, eg. when I installed Adobe Acrobat Reader DC, I would get no results when searching 'Adobe' or 'Acrobat' or 'Reader'.
I tried all of the suggestions above but unfortunately nothing worked.
I realised that the issue was specific to the builtin local administrator account. When I tried the same thing with multiple new users on the system my searches were working as expected. I suspect it's related to how some UWP apps (calc, edge) can't run under the local administrator account, maybe Cortana / Windows Search is broken for the local administrator.
astraburganastraburgan
This answer is my own discovery on Windows 10 Pro 1703 x64. (That's Creators Update, folks.) I had to resort to it because, to my surprise, the answer by Augusto Barreto did not work for me.Without further ado:
Cortana will not work immediately. (It is busy recreating the folder you just deleted.) But when it does, everything will be alright. Don't forget to delete the temporary user account.
Important notice: By the time I reached the conclusion to do this, I had ascertained that Windows Search Indexer was working okay and it was Cortana's problem that didn't show the result well. My evidence was that Cortana could find literally everything else (including my music) and searches from File Explorer worked well.
user477799
I solved it this way.
9,8131111 gold badges3535 silver badges4040 bronze badges
Can't Open Anything On Desktop Windows 10
GreenZGreenZ
In short if you are exhausted like me
create a new local admin user
And because I have recently reset my Windows 10 with keep my files option and everything was new it was not a bad solution and I forgot my previous Windows live account and started enjoying a clean and fast new user.
After trying a few solutions from here and there I finally created a new local Administrator Account and now everything works very fast and perfect.I tried below unsuccessful solutions before creating new account
My Problem starts when my previous windows 10 with anniversary updates and my connected windows live user account encountered lots of BSOD and because of mix of maybe following events
I have to add that in my situation Calculator apps and other win settings and builtin apps were shown in search by any other installed apps were not searched no matter how hard i tried.
Iman AbidiIman Abidi
38311 gold badge33 silver badges1616 bronze badges
I found a way to work this out by following a suggestion on this link.
Just copy the contents of the old start menu from
to
as apparently only the to programs were copied during the installation, but the missing ones could be found in 'All Users'.
I even prematurely removed all the contents of the Windows.old folder, but managed to recover the contents of the folder using Recuva. You can use it too if this is the case for you too. However, useless for SSD. Fortunately I copied the contents first to a HDD before I removed and I could recover the files from there.
I copied it all there and in a few seconds everything was working as it should.
Ev0oDEv0oD
Turning Cortana off helped me. However, once a month or so I will find that Search stops working again. Then I find 'Cortana' in Task Manager and kill it. That works immediately.
NoumenonNoumenon
36411 gold badge55 silver badges2020 bronze badges
Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged windowssearchwindows-10 or ask your own question.
Microsoft Windows 10 users may experience a common problem where Windows Defender won’t start on their system. The issue is often noticed when trying to turn Antivirus Protection on. Instead of the service turning on, the WindowsSystem32 folder will open.
The following fixes usually will fix this problem.
Fix 1 – Ensure Services are Started
Fix 2 – Registry Fix
This brief guide will take you each step of the way through opening and accessing the contents of .rar files using Windows 10.
NOTE: the steps in this tutorial are idential if you’re trying to open a .DMG or .RPM file in Windows 10 as well – so this guide could just as easily be called “How to Open RAR, DMG and RPM Files in Windows 10” :) Those formats are typically found on Mac and Linux/Unix systems – so being able to open them on a Windows 10 laptop/desktop/tablet can be very handy.
When you hope to change settings of the background, color, theme, font, startup, taskbar or lock screen pictures, it is unavoidable that you need to navigate to Personalization settings to achieve that.
Upon right clicking the Desktop in hope to get into Personalize, you can only stumble upon the error saying this file does not have an app associated with it for performing this action. Please install an app or, if one is already installed, create an association in the Default Apps Settings page.
But sometimes, you just find Windows 10 Settings won’t open and there is no personalization at all. In this case, when you click Settings above the Start menu, nothing happens as well.
In accordance with your reports, it has been found the issue that Windows-based programs can’t be accessed is rather common on Windows 10, you can’t open Windows Store, Personalize, Display settings, Start menu, Update & Security, Network setting. Or on some occasion, Windows 10 Action Center won’t open error occurs to you.
As you can see, once you are unable to access Windows 10 Settings, you can’t personalize as Windows 10 Personalize is not responding.
In order to deal with your can’t get into Personalization on Windows 10, this article offers you several most effective solutions. And it also holds true to fix Settings won’t open error on Windows 10, so if it is not the Personalize not opening, it is another system setting inaccessible, like Background or theme, you can also use the similar ways.
Now get ready to master why you run into the Personalization won’t be accessed error, how to open this Windows 10 setting and how to fix the issue that Windows 10 won’t let you personalize.
Why Does Windows 10 Personalization Setting Not Open?
As long as you fail to access any system settings, be it Personalize, Background, or theme, it implies that something incompatible remains on Windows 10.
It can be the corrupted account or system errors. In some situations, it may lie in that Windows 10 deactivated itself or your Windows license will expire soon, thus Windows 10 Settings not opening.
For people who hit upon the warning of ms-settings:personalization-background, perhaps you need to check if there is any problem with the system applications.
After knowing exactly what causes your Personalization not responding issue, you might as well go on to remove this Windows 10 Settings can’t open problem for your laptops or desktops.
How to Open Personalization on Windows 10?
Prior to resolving can’t open Personalization trouble, there is a surge of need to learn how to access Personalize settings properly on Windows 10.
Only when you make use of the right way to access Windows 10 settings can you personalize your PC.
Normally, there are mainly two common paths to get into Personalization on Windows 10.
Way 1: Open Personalize by Right Clicking
Right click the Desktop and then select Personalize from the list.
For users who have not yet activated Windows 10 or the account is not available, Windows 10 won’t let you personalize by making you unable to open the Personalization tab.
And you can see this file does not have an app associated with it for performing this action. Please install an app or, if one is already installed, create an association in the Default Apps Settings page error keeps popping up on Windows 10.
If the right click is not working on your computer, you have to solve this problem firstly or try the second way so as to navigate to Personalization or other Windows settings.
Way 2: Open Personalization from System Settings
If you feel like personalizing Windows 10, you need to go into Windows 10 settings as Personalization belongs to system settings.
On the basis that you have not yet happened to issue reminding you that Windows 10 settings won’t open, it is feasible to access Personalization in Settings.
1. Go to Start > Settings > Personalization.
2. Then all the personalization settings will come into your sight, including Background, colors Theme, Lock screen, Fonts, Start, and Taskbar.
Way 3: Get into Personalization from Control Panel
For Windows 10 customers, control panel stores almost system settings.
For sake of opening Windows 10 Personalize, you can attempt to turn to the control panel.
1. Open Control Panel.
2. Then you can notice the presence of Appearance and Personalization.
Here you need to View by Category.
Then all the personalization settings will appear on Windows 10. It is also available to View by Small icons and then to choose Personalization from the options as well.
Upon opening Personalization settings, you can perform actions to change related settings, for instance, replace the old lock screen with a new one or to change the previous fonts, themes, etc.
How to fix Personalization Won’t Open Error in Windows 10?Desktop Icons Won T Open Windows 10
In line with the culprits of the issue showing Windows 10 can’t personalize, you can take advantage of certain methods to check if you will receive the personalization not opening and responding problem on Windows 10.
Solution 1: Check Windows 10 Updates
If you have tried to access Personalization or Background or Display settings using the ways above, but to no avail, under this circumstance, it is needed to make sure you have installed the latest Windows 10 builds for your PC with the new features.
In some cases, to open Personalize from right-click menu, you can check whether or not there are any new updates that can fix Windows 10 no personalization issue.
1. Go to Start > Settings > Update & Security.
2. Under Windows update, hit Check for updates.
From this perspective, you can get Windows 10 updated, after that, restart your PC and try to access Personalization settings to see if it works now.
As for error that Update & Security can’t be opened, it is also feasible to manage to update to the latest Windows 10. But even if you still find right click and then choose Personalize, no response, maybe you need to take more measures to recover the irresponsive Windows-based settings, such as Personalization, Display settings, and themes.
Solution 2: Use Windows PowerShell
Secondly, concerning the issue of Windows 10 personalization does not open, you might as well make full use of Windows PowerShell tool to change the settings of the system applications.
1. Type in PowerShell in the search box and then right click it to Run as administrator.
2. In Windows PowerShell, copy and paste the following command and then press Enter to run it.
Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register “$($_.InstallLocation)AppXManifest.xml”}
3. Reboot Windows 10.
When your PC launches again, right click the Desktop again to see if Personalization can be accessed and if Windows 10 will let you personalize.
Solution 3: Create a New User Account
In other words, once your account occurs to corruption, you will have no access to the Windows settings. Screen to tv for samsung.
Therefore, there is a need to create a new account and then personalize Windows 10 with the new user account.
Since the steps to build a new Windows 10 account differs according to different Windows 10 versions, here take Windows 10 Enterprise as an example.
1. Navigate to Start > Settings > Account.
2. Under Family & other people, hit Add someone else to this PC.
3. Click I don’t have this person’s sign-in information.
4. Choose to Add a user without a Microsoft account.
5. Then enter the name, password of the new account.
6. Go back to the account settings and you can notice the presence of the new account you have just created for Windows 10.
Sign out the previous account and then sign in with the new user account.
On Windows 10 with the new account, attempt to get into personalization, perhaps this time you are able to open it and work on it as you wish.
My Laptop Won't Open Any Programs
In short, in regard to Windows 10 personalization won’t open error, besides learning to access Personalize correctly, it is also advisable that you take advantage of other solutions to fix the issue that Windows 10 settings can’t open.
Comments are closed.
|
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |