Cortana - Anyone got her working/Win 10 Bugs

[Arthran]

So like most, I've spent the last day or so working through my Windows 10 bugs getting it running smoothly, I am now down to 2 bugs!

Cortana was telling me she was disabled by company policy, I discovered this was actually because my system hadn't downloaded the UK voice pack, did this and a restarted and that error has been replaced with a Cortana is not available in your area yet message. Yet I'm sure UK was one of the key releases, Am I going crazy here?

And I also have this wonderful bug with my windows store, click the button and watch the blue box come up, give a load icon and then Poof, close itself. Tried doing a sfc scan with no success, most posts suggest re-installing the store, like thats even an option I can see... Anyone else encountered this or any suggestions?

Thanks guys

[Jonj1611]

I had the store appear and it downloaded like 30 updates. Are you logged in or using a local account?

[Saracen]

... Are you logged in or using a local account?

Good question. Allegedly, Cortana requires MS account to run, which if true, would be a good reason for using a local account, IMHO.

[GuidoLS]

1) Cortana does require an MS account
2) Cortana does require an active internet connection
3) AFAIK, Cortana is active for UK users - it certainly is for mobile users.
4) Try opening the store from the start menu instead of the quick bar. I had a similar problem, but it was early in the preview. Since the store left beta for Win10 (10240) it's been pretty well behaved as far as I can tell.

[Mister]

I killed her because she's a spy for microsoft, if you read the EULA

[Saracen]

1) Cortana does require an MS account
2) Cortana does require an active internet connection
.....

It requires an MS account to operate properly, and SAYS it isn't working without one, but what evidence is there (serious question, by the way) as to what, if anything, it does under a local account?

Does it simply not load? Or loads and monitors, but doesn't record ANY data? Or loads, logs data but doesn't assign it to any form of unique ID? Or loads, logs and assigns to a unique ID linked to that machine ID, which it then tries to associate with a unique User ID via other means, like location, sent/rec'd emails, for instance. And if so, is that unique ID ever subsequently linked to an MS account, or a physically unique person?

For instance, someone (me, for example) runs Win10 with a local account. I send/receive emails, texts, etc and Cortana does it's thing but, because I don't have an MS account, doesn't attempt to personalise based on it. It does, however, assign a unique hardware ID to my machine. Associated with that ID as a primary key are my email address and the phone number in my contacts for, say, you.

You, on the other hand, have my name, email address(es), birthday (so you can send me a card), address (to mail the card), work number, mobile number, etc. So now, MS can link my machine ID to me, personally, through data gleaned from YOUR machine, because they have name, address, DOB, phone and mobile numbers for home and work, etc.

The only thing MS haven't done in all that is create an MS account.

Now suppose a relative of mine is a member of, ummmm .... a higjly secretive clandestine intelligence organisation, and I have their emergency phone number. As soon as, or maybe even before, I open an MS account, MS have access to that because it's in my contacts.

And if you think that's highly speculative, I do have a now-deceased relative that was indeed a member of an official body sufficiently secretive I wouldn't have mentioned it had they not been deceased for a long time. And it's not a US organisation either, which would have put MS's possession of ANY data about that person into context.

But all that aside, we simply do not know what Cortana might be doing behind the scenes, or might, by virtue of auto update, start doing in three months or three years.

[Arthran]

1) Cortana does require an MS account
2) Cortana does require an active internet connection
3) AFAIK, Cortana is active for UK users - it certainly is for mobile users.
4) Try opening the store from the start menu instead of the quick bar. I had a similar problem, but it was early in the preview. Since the store left beta for Win10 (10240) it's been pretty well behaved as far as I can tell.

Logged in with an MS account rather than a local account and the store is giving the same stupid issue no matter where I open it from unfortunately

[GuidoLS]

It requires an MS account to operate properly, and SAYS it isn't working without one, but what evidence is there (serious question, by the way) as to what, if anything, it does under a local account?

Does it simply not load? Or loads and monitors, but doesn't record ANY data? Or loads, logs data but doesn't assign it to any form of unique ID? Or loads, logs and assigns to a unique ID linked to that machine ID, which it then tries to associate with a unique User ID via other means, like location, sent/rec'd emails, for instance. And if so, is that unique ID ever subsequently linked to an MS account, or a physically unique person?

For instance, someone (me, for example) runs Win10 with a local account. I send/receive emails, texts, etc and Cortana does it's thing but, because I don't have an MS account, doesn't attempt to personalise based on it. It does, however, assign a unique hardware ID to my machine. Associated with that ID as a primary key are my email address and the phone number in my contacts for, say, you.

You, on the other hand, have my name, email address(es), birthday (so you can send me a card), address (to mail the card), work number, mobile number, etc. So now, MS can link my machine ID to me, personally, through data gleaned from YOUR machine, because they have name, address, DOB, phone and mobile numbers for home and work, etc.

The only thing MS haven't done in all that is create an MS account.

Now suppose a relative of mine is a member of, ummmm .... a higjly secretive clandestine intelligence organisation, and I have their emergency phone number. As soon as, or maybe even before, I open an MS account, MS have access to that because it's in my contacts.

And if you think that's highly speculative, I do have a now-deceased relative that was indeed a member of an official body sufficiently secretive I wouldn't have mentioned it had they not been deceased for a long time. And it's not a US organisation either, which would have put MS's possession of ANY data about that person into context.

But all that aside, we simply do not know what Cortana might be doing behind the scenes, or might, by virtue of auto update, start doing in three months or three years.

I turned it off (I won't put a gender to a piece of software). As you know, I monitored the system for what turned out to be several weeks, including deep packet inspections. You only have my word on this, but as of right now, off is off. It's still off, even after the upgrade to live. All I can do is keep watching. And I've still seen nothing worrisome from the various privacy sites. Can't say and won't speculate on tomorrow.

[GuidoLS]

Logged in with an MS account rather than a local account and the store is giving the same stupid issue no matter where I open it from unfortunately

If you haven't already, try the following -

Press "Windows key + R".
Type wsreset.exe and click OK.

That will reset your store cache, which seems to cause more than a few errors for people.

[Hingy]

Cortana works for me. Just need to use it one and tell her your name.

[Hingy]

BTW, I have found voice control to be a bit intermittent. The upgrade to Windows 10 had set my microphone levels to low. Increasing this again helped.

[jayanainsy]

Run cmdlet to disable the developer mode and reregister Cortana, restart and check -

Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}

[corbett]

keep undating maybe the problem is resolved in new updates.

[shaithis]

Why spend time trying to get the dodgy imitation working?

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/stor...e/9wzdncrfj2gk

[DeViLzzz]

Why in the heck would anyone want to run Cortana? Bad enough we got so many other ways they collect data you don't need to be feeding Cortana stuff.

[julian98]

i dont use it but people like to use siri, alexa etc as it is more convenient for them to speak than doing the action themselves. no one cares about privacy tbh take fb for example