Last-minute Win10 Anniversary Update patch, 14393.10, may break Cortana

[Karlston]

If the problem’s widespread, it could affect today’s Anniversary Update rollout

Last night I was surprised -- no, shocked -- to see Microsoft release a last-minute patch for Windows 10 Anniversary Update, build 1607. Why? Any release of a patch, even a simple patch, on the night before a scheduled massive rollout is begging the Bug Gods to start rumbling.

 

As of very early Tuesday morning, the Dung Beetles are rolling.

 

Last night, Microsoft released KB 3176929, the third cumulative update for Windows 10 build 1607. (I call it Win 10.2.3.) As you no doubt know, build 1607 is scheduled to start a massive rollout today, Aug. 2. In the normal course of events, Microsoft would roll out the latest release -- the version with all outstanding cumulative updates applied.

 

Given the problems I’ve seen reported online, it’s likely that somebody in Redmond is reconsidering the decision to roll out 14393.10 this morning.

 

What does KB 3176929 actually do? We haven’t a clue. There’s no KB article, no Insider Hub post, no Blogging Windows post.

 

Windows Insider spokesperson Dona Sarkar tweeted last night:

We have now released cumulative update 14393.10 to the Fast Ring via Windows Update ... and this is *just* for PC.

Then, four hours later:

14393.10 is now live for Fast, Slow, RP rings. Rel notes coming in FB Hub shortly.

That was around midnight, Aug. 1, the night before build 1607 is scheduled for full release.

 

Since then, I’ve seen reports of various kinds of anomalous behaviors.

 

For one, the people who have version 14393 and didn’t acquire it through the Windows Insider program (yes, pirates live among us) also received KB 3176929, and are now sitting at Version 1607 OS Build 14393.10. Clearly, Sarkar’s first tweet was wrong.

 

More problematic are the reports appearing sporadically about problems with Cortana in this build. On WindowsCentral, poster AB Lambert says:

On my laptop Cortana stopped working ... All I have is the search icon which replaced the Cortana icon. I uninstalled the update and got Cortana back and then I reinstalled the update and lost her again.

John McIlhinney says:

This update broke Cortana on my Surface 3.  She's still there on the Task Bar and she still opens but she can't do anything. I hope they don't roll out this release as the Anniversary Update and break Cortana for everyone.

UPDATE: She's working again.

Over on Reddit, netherbound says:

This update broke Cortana for me. She is not working at all now. Host machine is effected but VM on the host updated just fine and Cortana still works.

 

And rpodric confirms:

Uh oh, same here with Enterprise (yes, it had been working fine). This is the last thing they needed to happen on Day 0.

That's precisely the point.

 

It looks like some Win10 customers are experiencing a last-moment bug -- present in 14393.10, but absent from yesterday’s 14393.5 -- that disables many of Cortana’s features, including voice response and internet access. With only a few hours of experience under our belts, it’s much too early to pinpoint the exact symptoms or speculate about causes -- except it’s clearly linked to this last-minute patch.

 

I have no idea what possessed The Powers That Be to change a “final” build only hours before it was due to roll out to 370 million-or-so customers.

 

Are you having problems with Win 10.2.3? Hit me here in the comments, or over on AskWoody.com.

 

Source: Last-minute Win10 Anniversary Update patch, 14393.10, may break Cortana (InfoWorld - Woody Leonhard)

[BDX]

No problem here. And I thought everybody hated Cortana anyway.

[WALLONN7]

And Microsoft poops at the last minute!!!

+1 @Karlston for makin' me laugh!!!!

[Sylence]

I dunno if it's related but stickynotes program crashes on a laptop when trying to load, on other PC it works correctly. 

[WALLONN7]

2 minutes ago, saeed_dc said:

I dunno if it's related but stickynotes program crashes on a laptop when trying to load, on other PC it works correctly. 

 

Try this - option one. It sounds like corrupted files during the update.

[Sylence]

6 minutes ago, WALLONN7 said:

 

Try this - option one. It sounds like corrupted files during the update.

 

I clean installed it using ISO. that command was the first thing I tried, but it got stuck at 14% and stayed like that for more than 10 mins and it was when i closed the command prompt. I really never got any good results by running that command hoping it will fix system files lol

[WALLONN7]

Just now, saeed_dc said:

 

I clean installed it using ISO. that command was the first thing I tried, but it got stuck at 14% and stayed like there for more than 10 mins and it was when i closed the command prompt. I really never got any good results by running that command hoping it will fix system files lol

 

Have you tried option one?! Boot time is the better choice...

[Karlston]

1 hour ago, BDX said:

And I thought everybody hated Cortana anyway.

 

Good point. Breaking Cortana may not be a bug, but a feature.

[SPECTRUM]

is not really Cortana but the Search service stop working in some PCs after the first restart, anyway if you restart again the problem is fixed completely, so is not a major issue, probably is just a minor issue with the service registration during the update.

[Sylence]

3 minutes ago, WALLONN7 said:

 

Have you tried option one?! Boot time is the better choice...

 

I tried it before on Windows 8.1, couldn't do much help but Im gonna try it again on this Windows 10 and if it doesn't solve it i'll replace it with the Windows 10 retail ISO file i got from Microsoft website 

[WALLONN7]

4 minutes ago, saeed_dc said:

 

I tried it before on Windows 8.1, couldn't do much help but Im gonna try it again on this Windows 10 and if it doesn't solve it i'll replace it with the Windows 10 retail ISO file i got from Microsoft website 

 

Same machine in both cases?! If so...

[Sylence]

Just now, WALLONN7 said:

 

Same machine in both cases?!

 

no, installed on 2 machines, 1 is good the other has this problem..it's just waste of time and wearing out my hard drive..

i used o&o shutup too in both machines.

[WALLONN7]

Just now, saeed_dc said:

 

no, installed on 2 machines, 1 is good the other has this problem..it's just waste of time and wearing out my hard drive..

i used o&o shutup too in both machines.

 

I meant Windows 8.1 / 10 issue... same machine?!

[Sylence]

Just now, WALLONN7 said:

 

I meant Windows 8.1 / 10 issue... same machine?!

 

Same machine

[WALLONN7]

4 minutes ago, saeed_dc said:

 

Same machine

 

That's my point... Two different SO and the same issue... Coincidence?! No way... It's hardware related...

[Sylence]

6 minutes ago, WALLONN7 said:

 

That's my point... Two different SO and the same issue... Coincidence?! No way... It's hardware related...

 

out of 20 successful Windows installations in 3 years only 2 times had such issues with corrupt system files, issues weren't even the same. i think it's more software related. on this laptop i installed a couple things like Autocad 2017 sp1 and all of its components. plus the drivers came straight form Windows update since the laptop is a bit old and i rather let Windows update decide which driver is more suitable

[Batu69]

37 minutes ago, Karlston said:

Breaking Cortana may not be a bug, but a feature

That it's! To who don't know about new feature in windows 10 Anniversary Update  

[nsanelurker]

poor SW quality assurance, crowd sourced beta testing.

 

no, thank you.

 

if I'm ever going to use Windows 10, it won't be any other edition than LTSB.

 

what a joke this "new OS every 4 months" model is.

[Karlston]

A follow up from Woody...

Microsoft has not yet acknowledged, much less fixed, the last-minute bug

A bad patch distributed the day before Windows 10 Anniversary Update’s release has taken out Cortana on many machines. Yesterday, I wrote about the build 14393.10 patch, KB 3176929, which Microsoft distributed to beta testers on the night of Aug. 1. I have no idea why Microsoft patched the Anniversary Update on the night before its long-anticipated general release.

 

Thanks to contributors on Reddit and on AskWoody.com, we now have details about the way this specific patch disabled Cortana on many machines.

 

As best I can tell, Microsoft has not yet acknowledged the problem, except a report on one Microsoft Answers forum thread that “Microsoft support says engineering is working on the issue, hope to resolve in the next couple days.” I have seen no workaround.

 

There are three telltale symptoms.

 

First, when you click in the Cortana Search box, Cortana doesn’t appear. Instead, you get a notification to “Start typing to search for apps, files, and settings” (screenshot). On the left side of the Cortana search pane, under the hamburger icon, you see a “home” icon, but the “notebook” icon that normally appears below "home" is missing. If you type in the search box, Cortana only looks for local files and programs -- there’s no intelligent repartee, no search outside the PC. Cortana works, in effect, exactly like the Search box in Windows 7 or 8.1.

 

Second, when you right-click on the taskbar on most Windows 10 systems, the second entry says Cortana and you’re given the option of hiding Cortana, showing the Cortana icon only, or showing the search box -- which is the default. But on these clobbered systems, when you right-click on the taskbar (screenshot), there is no entry at all for Cortana.

 

And third, inside Microsoft Edge’s Advanced settings (click the ellipses, then Settings, scroll down, then Advanced Settings), you’re normally given the option of turning off Cortana search, keeping Cortana from working inside Edge. In Cortana-clobbered machines, that option is grayed out (screenshot). Edge informs, “This setting isn’t available when Cortana is turned off in Windows” -- a fascinating observation, because the Anniversary Update removes the ability to (easily) turn off Cortana.

 

There are other, more subtle, manifestations of the problem. PKCano reports

If I type something in Search Box, Cortana Background Task Host pops up in Task Mgr as well and I see some CPU usage, so something is going on.

Rpodrick reports:

No Notebook and no Windows Search key at all. Also “Not Configured” in group policy.

Many threads I’ve seen on the Microsoft Answers forum and elsewhere are simply incorrect. Users didn’t do anything to bring on the problem. It’s a bug that appears in some copies of one, specific version of Windows 10 Anniversary Update. Unfortunately, that version of Win10 AU was rolled out to a few hundred million people on Aug. 2 -- and it’s still rolling out, even as we speak.

 

This Cortana bug is different from the language snafu that has disabled Cortana before. It isn’t related to Cortana being pulled from Education editions. It’s directly attributable to build 14393.10. And yes, the bug was introduced the night before the big rollout.

 

I haven’t seen any fixes that work. If you’re in the Insiders program and roll back to beta builds 14393.0 or 14393.5, Cortana returns. If you’re not in the Insiders program and you have this problem, you can roll back to the Fall Update 1511 (Start > Settings > Update & security > Recovery, Go back to an earlier build), which takes quite a while.

 

That’s assuming you actually want Cortana, which is by no means a given.

 

Microsoft’s in an interesting quandary right now. If the ‘Softies release a manual workaround, chances are pretty good somebody will figure out a way to reverse the steps in the workaround and allow anyone to turn off Cortana. That would be something of a Holy Grail in some circles, as Microsoft makes it very difficult to turn off Cortana in the Anniversary Update.

 

If the ‘Softies release a patch -- perhaps yet another cumulative update for its newly released product -- some will be tempted to simply block the cumulative update and thus retain control over Cortana.

 

Let’s hear it for last-minute patching. 

 

Many thanks to those who have contributed, especially PKCano (who took the shots) and rpodrick.

 

Source: How to tell if your Windows 10 Anniversary Update clobbered Cortana (InfoWorld - Woody Leonhard)

 

InfoWorld - Woody on Windows

 

AskWoody.com - Woody Leonhard's no-bull news, tips and help for Windows and Office

[Karlston]

Another follow up from Woody...

Microsoft hasn’t endorsed the solution, but if you want Cortana back it appears to work

Yesterday, I wrote about a flaw in Windows 10 Anniversary Update that completely disables Cortana on some machines. I have no idea why Anniversary Update clobbers Cortana. All I know is that on a significant number of upgraded machines, Cortana doesn’t appear in the search box, it isn’t available on the taskbar’s right-click context menu, and it’s permanently turned off in Edge.

 

But sometime yesterday, a solution for the problem appeared.

 

As best I can tell, a self-described Computer Science student with the handle Ambious first posted the solution on the Microsoft Answers forum:

 

1. Start the Registry Editor (type regedit in the search box)

 

2. Navigate to

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search

 

3. And change the key BingSearchEnabled from 0 to 1

 

You may have to log off, then back on again, but some report that it works straightaway. Ambious also advises to make sure that all the Cortana flags are set to 1. On the machines I’ve seen, that means you should ensure CanCortanaBeEnabled and CortanaConsent are set to 1.

 

But there are two problems:

 

First, Microsoft hasn’t endorsed this approach. Microsoft has had two days and hundreds of publicly visible complaints (not to mention more than a hundred Feedback Hub complaints) and, as best I can tell, there’s been no official acknowledgment -- and this fix has been ignored.

 

And second, we don’t know if there are any undesirable side effects to the change. Everything I’ve seen says that setting BingSearchEnabled to 1 is innocuous. But if that’s the case, why is there a Registry entry for it in the first place? Is there something we don’t know about?

 

Microsoft managed to push the 14393.10 patch less than 24 hours before the general rollout of build 1607. You’d think they could've posted a manual fix in a similar timeframe.

 

Source: How to fix Cortana after the Windows 10 Anniversary Update (InfoWorld - Woody Leonhard)

 

InfoWorld - Woody on Windows

 

AskWoody.com - Woody Leonhard's no-bull news, tips and help for Windows and Office