I disabled Cortana but it still runs

Question

I have disabled Cortana in a number of different ways, including Settings, Registry, and Group Policy. Yet it still runs and hogs memory:

I see this post, but it's not very helpful.

1) 83MB of memory isn't a hog. That's positively paltry. 2) Saying you've done things in lots of places doesn't tell us anything. SHOW us what you've done to disable Cortana because right now we're very likely to suggest things you may have already tried, wasting all our time. 3) In my corporate environment we have disabled Cortana as fully as we can, and the Cortana process still runs using 83MB. It's baked into the OS as the local search function. — music2myear, Jun 15 '18 at 15:16
Possible duplicate of [not using cortana, but cortana's using ram](https://superuser.com/questions/1102009/not-using-cortana-but-cortanas-using-ram) — Moab, Jun 15 '18 at 15:29
Possible duplicate of [Can I completely disable Cortana on Windows 10?](https://superuser.com/questions/949569/can-i-completely-disable-cortana-on-windows-10) — Biswapriyo, Jun 15 '18 at 15:39

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 15 '18 at 15:20

The post you linked only appears not to be helpful, but the answer, while not accepted IS the correct answer.

"Cortana" is the friendly name given to the built-in search function of Windows 10. While many of its features can be disabled, such as the cloud, voice control, and other things, search itself is baked into the OS (as it has been since Windows 95, I think).

While you're seeing "Cortana" and thinking it's the voice search assistant thingy, in this case all you're seeing is the standard built-in search functions that are required for OS function.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 15 '18 at 15:40

Windows Search is embedded in Cortana. If you don't mind disabling Windows Search indexing, which can be replaced by third-party tools such as DocFetcher and Agent Ransack, you can stop Cortana completely.

Press Windows, type cortana and click the Settings (gear) icon.
Turn off Cloud search, **My device history* and then Clear my device history.
Press Windows, type regedit and select it.
Navigate to (or copy and paste the following into the location bar) : Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows
Right-click the Windows key, select New > DWORD (32 Bit) Value and name it AllowCortana. It should default to 0 [zero], which should disable Cortana after a reboot.

However, if you just want to disable Cortana voice and web interfaces, it is easier to use a third-party tool such as ShutUp10.

I disabled Cortana but it still runs

2 Answers2