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Search on Task Bar Broken

Anonymous
2019-08-13T19:46:29+00:00

So I see this is becoming a common problem, and I can safely say I've tried almost everything to fix it.  The problem is I can type into the search on the task bar, but all that I see is a grey box with no results, which makes finding my fav programs very tough indeed.  Thankfully I can scroll through the start menu to find the program and windows explorer search works fine.

Now if I create a new admin account, the search task bar works again, so this points to a corrupted/problematic user profile of some type but literally everything works except this windows 10 search task bar, so hoping someone knows where this corruption/problem exists so I can fix it, rather than creating a whole new account and moving everything to the new user account including all my managed windows credentials. 

Would be nice if there was a way to simply remove the aspect that affects the search bar from the user profile and rebuild that aspect only.  Hopefully a simple deletion of a few user keys in the registry?

Does anyone have any suggestions outside of the normal DISM, sfc, search troubleshooter, reboot, etc which I have all done to no avail.  I also tried to restore to an earlier point in time when everything worked, but alas - the system restore failed which is a different problem.

Otherwise, I need to move over 1 TB of user data to the new profile - ugh!

So fingers crossed and listening.

Thanks Al

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Cortana and search

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  1. Anonymous
    2019-09-04T17:41:24+00:00

    We are starting to experience this issue on some of our computers now that we are pushing 1903 in our organization.

    We do not have the KB4508541 update on the affected PCs.

    We found that if we stop the Cortana Process in Task Manager that we were able to use search for that session.  But Cortana restarts itself and if you restart your computer you may have to go through the same song and dance again.

    I'm not saying that it will work for you, but on the computers I've tested it seems to work for us.

    3 people found this answer helpful.
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  2. Anonymous
    2019-08-15T12:38:08+00:00

    Took overnight to re-index the 1TB of user data, I then rebooted the computer and unfortunately no change and the exact same problem still exists.  Whatever happened to the user profile, it's only affecting the task bar search.  This computer also has a UPS and the SMART characteristics of the main drive are all very green with no issues.   Really at a loss for why this is broken, and would like to avoid copying everything to a new user account.

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  3. Anonymous
    2019-08-14T15:38:12+00:00

    Just to illustrate the issue and I've seen this on the net in various forms as well.  When search is activated, not even the header for All, Apps, Documents, Email, Web, More, Feedback is displayed.  It's completely blank and grey as shown below.  Although the re-indexing is about 50% complete at this stage, it has not changed/fixed anything and that grey box is still present.  I can type in the search bar, but alas - nothing ever appears.

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  4. Anonymous
    2019-08-14T12:39:46+00:00

    So doing the index rebuild, but here are a copy of answers to your questions:

    SFC reported no integrity violations

    DISM just completed normally after reaching 100% - no error messages at all

    The search troubleshooter equally reported no issues found and ran it as administrator as well

    As for Method 1 above, all services and dependency services are running normally, and no changes to any of them was required.

    I just started the index rebuild and will report back once it's complete.  And again, the search does work in a new admin account I created and just hoping there is a fix for the current admin account to avoid moving everything from one account to another and resetting all the security credentials

    Kind Regards

    Al

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  5. Anonymous
    2019-08-14T12:24:22+00:00

    Hi, 

    Thank you for writing to Microsoft Community Forums.

    We understand how difficult it is, when the device doesn't work in the way it should. I appreciate the troubleshooting steps that you've tried so far.

    Seems that the issue is related to Windows search feature, which is not working in the current user account and moreover you have confirmed that it is working on new user account.

    As you have mentioned the troubleshooting steps in the post which should have fixed the issue. We would like to know the end result of SFC Scan, DISM and Search Troubleshooter.

    However, we would suggest to perform these methods and check.

    Method 1: Check the Windows Search service status.

    1. Press Windows +R key from the keyboard to launch Run command.
    2. Type services.msc and click Ok.
    3. Scroll down the list and right click on Windows Search service.
    4. Click on Properties and then change the startup type as Automaticand click on Start under General tab.
    5. Select the Dependencies tab. You will see a list of dependency services, please expand each
    6. Then search the Dependencies service under the Service list and check the status. If required perform step 4 for all of them.

    **Method 2:**How to Reset and Rebuild Search Index in Windows 10

    1. Open the Control Panel, click/tap on the Indexing Options icon, and close the Control Panel.
    2. Click on the Advanced button.
    3. In the Index Settings tab, click on the Rebuild button under Troubleshooting.
    4. Click on OK to confirm.
    5. Indexing will now be in progress and once it is completed, then check if the issue persist.

    We await your response.

    Aditya Roy

    Microsoft Community – Moderator

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