Has your Win10 Search box gone black? Does Search even work?

[Karlston]

Has your Win10 Search box gone black? Does Search even work?

The Windows 10 Search debacle continues, with many people reporting this morning that their Search box has turned black and that Search itself doesn’t work. The cause seems to be related to Microsoft moving Search from old-fashioned Win32 code to a new-fangled WinRT/UWP/JavaScript mess. Can you search this morning?

Thinkstock

 

Here’s a quick test. Fire up or reboot your Win10 machine. Click inside the Search box on the lower left. You should see something like the screenshot I posted on Computerworld two days ago. This morning, though, many people are reporting a completely black screen, as shown in this screenshot of a recently patched Win10 version 1903 system (Build 18362.592).

Woody Leonhard/IDG

In addition, Search simply doesn’t work: Type something in the Search box and nothing happens.

 

How is that possible? you ask. How can a key working piece of Windows 10 just fade to black? What did you do to break your machine?

 

The top-level answer is pretty simple: You didn’t do anything wrong. Microsoft reached into your Win10 PC overnight and screwed up its search function. Again. You didn’t give Microsoft permission to break Search. It just broke, all by itself.

 

For a more detailed explanation, specifically for Win10 version 1909, I’ll refer to @warrenrumak on AskWoody:

What really sticks out for me with some of these newer Search versions, is that they use a ton of memory. Click on the Search box and it immediately consumes 120+ MB of memory on my machine.

 

I did a little digging around I think I figured out why … the entire search box is now a web application built with JavaScript & React. This of course means that some kind of web rendering engine is required … it’s probably Edge.

Further exploration put the pieces together:

 

The search box on the Task Bar, and in Windows Explorer, both load C:WindowsSystemAppsMicrosoft.Windows.Search_(version)SearchApp.exe when you click on them. Only the UI is different.

As he pushed on his system, he triggered a compilation error (screenshot).

Woody Leonhard/IDG

Which sure looks like a JavaScript smoking gun to me. @warrenrumak concludes:

 

JavaScript is used to render the filtered search results. No wonder it’s so buggy … that’s way too much unnecessary technology to render a drop-down list. 

Which brings me around to the question we’ve all been asking for the past few months: What’s wrong with Search in Win10 version 1909? @warrenrumak has a theory that sure rings true with me:

There is a lot of evidence in the JavaScript source to suggest that it was built by the Bing team. If I had to guess, I’d say that what happened here was that the desktop search experience was moved from the Windows team to the Bing web team, and they just don’t have the skills to build desktop programs with efficient C++.

 

And, it looks like there is a mechanism to update the JavaScript code from a remote server, without actually upgrading the Search application itself.

 

Maybe this also explains why the bugs with the new Windows Explorer search bar haven’t been acknowledged by the Windows team … could very well be that the Windows team doesn’t even own that code anymore!

We still haven’t resolved the question of what triggers a change in the text down in the Search box. Since writing about this two days ago, Howard Goldberg has extended the list of observed Search default texts:

• Type here to search (vast majority, at least so it seems)
• Search the web and PC (at least one from the original post)
• Start your search (at least 1 confirmed with screenshot)
• Start a Web Search (at least 3 confirmed)
• Search (at least one confirmed with screenshot)

As for the black Search box, Goldberg has two different Win10 1909 systems, one of which works:

I went through both of my Win10 systems. … Cortana and Search settings are all configured identifically.

 

On one system, search is still ‘working.’ On my other system, it’s blank.

An anonymous poster now says that disabling Bing in Win10 Search, followed by a reboot, fixed the problem.

 

Whatever happened, it’s an unholy mess — and it’s being pushed without notification, without permission. Where’s the Windows team on all of this? Oh. That’s right. There isn’t a Windows team anymore.

 

Breaking Windows as a Service ...

 

Catch the latest on AskWoody.com.

 

 

Source: Has your Win10 Search box gone black? Does Search even work? (Computerworld - Woody Leonhard)

[Karlston]

Win10 Search is working again

Following up on numerous tips here (and elsewhere), I rebooted twice and finally got my Win10 version 1903 Search box back:

 

 

Search on my  main machine is now build 2020.02.04.6238073.

 

Sorry, but this doesn’t have anything to do with Microsoft’s Servers going down. The black box is clearly the result of a buggy Search build that was pushed onto Win10 machines – without any warning, no documentation, and no permissions.

 

MS has been messing with Search versions for the past few days. Now, it appears, they’ve found something that works.

 

How long until they break it again?

 

And — I repeat — how could anyone with fiduciary responsibilities for a system allow something like this to happen?

 

UPDATE: Mary Jo Foley reported at 11:48 am Central time that she still can’t get it to work. Shortly afterwards, she posted on ZDNet that three reboots brought the Search screen back. “No word on what caused the issue or how Microsoft intends to prevent this from happening in the future.”

 

ANOTHER UPDATE: Microsoft has told Tom Warren that:

Microsoft confirmed it was investigating access and latency issues “with multiple Microsoft 365 services,” before fixing the issue at 11:35AM ET. Microsoft blames a “third-party networking fiber provider” for experiencing a network disruption resulting in multiple Microsoft 365 services issues. While Microsoft has fixed this issue, many are still reporting that Windows search is still not working. You may need to reboot your Windows 10 PC to get search working again, though.

Okay, Microsoft. Pull the other one. Since when does a third-party networking fiber provider increment Windows Search build numbers? I need to get Susan Bradley to re-instate her Pinocchio awards. Five noses, this one.

 

 

Source: Win10 Search is working again (AskWoody - Woody Leonhard)

[jango]

My Windows 10 Search fix this instruction:

https://www.windowslatest.com/2020/02/05/its-not-just-you-windows-10-search-is-giving-blank-results/

[zanderthunder]

Another alternative fix for that search box issue, via Reddit and this one requires no restart.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/ez8gan/windows_10_search_bar_not_working_after/fglpc3a/?context=3

cc. @Karlston

 

[duddy]

It’s Not Just You, Windows 10 Search Is Giving Blank Results

 

Microsoft’s efforts to integrate its cloud services on Windows 10 has just backfired for the company. Windows 10’s Search feature has been hit with what appears to be some pretty widespread issues.

 

Windows Search is currently returning blank results if you search for apps, files or web, and it looks like the problem is with Microsoft’s Bing.

 

he other Microsoft services such as Office and Bing itself are unaffected by the issue and Microsoft has yet to acknowledge the outage. There is currently no further information on what’s going on.

 

“I seem to have gotten the same problem as well and on both of my laptops. The search just stopped working a couple hours ago seemingly out of nowhere. Curious to see how many more people are having this issue,” a user said on Reddit.

 

We have discovered that disabling Microsoft Bing integration in Windows Search restores the service, but you need to play with Windows Registry.

How to fix Windows Search blank results

Microsoft has apparently included a way to easily disable the web integration and it can be done by creating a new Registry value. This would disable both Cortana and Bing integration in Start Menu’s search menu.

 

To fix Windows Search blank results, simply follow these steps:

1. Open Windows Run.
2. Type  “regedit” to open Windows Registry.
3. Click Yes to the prompt asking for administrator permission.
4. Navigate to the following path: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search
5. Right-click the Search option.
6. 
7. Choose New > DWORD (32-bit) Value.
8. Name the new value BingSearchEnabled.
9. Double-click the new BingSearchEnabled that you just created.
10. 
11. Change the value to 0 if it’s 1.
12. 
13. Click OK to continue.
14. Now look for ‘CortanaConsent’.
15. Double-click CortanaConsent value and change its value data to 0. If you don’t see CortanaConsent value, create it manually.

After modifying Registry, you can reboot the system or try any one of the following steps:

• Open Task Manager with CTRL+SHIFT+ESC shortcut and right-click on ‘Cortana’ task, and end the process.
• Restart File Explorer.
• Open Windows Run with Win+R shortcut and type ‘services.msc’. Look for ‘Windows Search’ and right-click to restart it.

If you’ve followed all the steps correctly, Windows Search should start working again.

 

This is a straightforward change and Bing search can be re-enabled if you change back the values to 1 by following the above instructions. If you’ve never used Registry editor before, we recommend backing up your Registry before playing with it.

 

Let us know if you are able to use Windows Search again after disabling Bing integrating.

 

Source

[Karlston]

Similar topics merged.