Dictation stops working and gets stuck on "initializing"

Question

The speech-to-text dictation in Windows 10 (launched by holding Windows logo key and pressing H)

stops listening after about 10 seconds. After a few minutes, it gets stuck on "initializing" forever. This also happens if the user uses the keyboard for editing the dictated text. The only way to get the dictation working again is to kill "Microsoft Text Input Application" in the task manager (end task) and then restart dictation again.

• To easily reproduce this problem: use dictation, let it stop and start listening several times. Then it will get stuck on "initializing".

I have reported this problem on the Windows Feedback Hub, but Microsoft has still not fixed this problem. It happens on different computers, even after a new Windows 10 install. I've seen plenty of reports from other people experiencing the same problem.

There is no faulty hardware, no corrupted system files (sfc /scannow reports no integrity violations), no disk errors, no faulty memory modules - and so on.

PLEASE FIX THIS BUG MICROSOFT.

It would be nice to use dictation for more than a few minutes at a time.

(Note I could only categorise this topic under "Ease of access", because there is no other category for this problem.)

Answer 1

I have a brand new HP Envy X360 laptop and have the same issue. Win+H. Works for a minute or 1-2 sentences. Then stops working. I close and re-open and it just remains stuck on "Initializing..." until I reboot Windows.

Answer 2

I've already done the repair of system files (sfc /scannow from a Command Prompt opened as Administrator). Makes no difference.

Windows Speech Recognition is different from the speech to text dictation (Windows logo key and H) that freezes after about 30 seconds.

Answer 3

I found WSR software (almost unchanged since Vista) not to be as good as Dictation Win+H (Windows 10). I found Dictation actually auto-corrects itself after hearing words incorrectly if the sentence didn't make sense. WSR just mindlessly types away and I have a lot of errors.

My notes are chemistry related and I found WSR has a difficult time with scientific wording vs Dictation.

There's a way to "train" WSR to increase its accuracy. I'll see if that helps.