Unable to type in Windows 10 search box

[Kevin S]

Hi,


I am unable to type into the search box in the task bar of my Windows 10 laptop.


Not sure if it's related but there did appear to be some updates applied when I logged off last night.


Googling I have found a number of suggestions.


So far I have tried the following

Attempted to restart Cortana from Task manager and services however Cortana is not visible in either.​

Run powershell as administrator and executed the following​

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

Run C:\Windows\system32\ctfmon.exe​

Restart Windows Explorer as follows​

- Press Windows key + X​

- Click Task Manager​

- Select the Processes tab​

- Scroll down to Windows Explorer then select it​

- Click Restart​

run system file checker "sfc /scannow" in command prompt run as administrator.​

run the following lines in the command line​

taskkill /f /im explorer.exe
taskkill /f /im shellexperiencehost.exe
timeout /t 3 /NOBREAK > nul
del %localappdata%\Packages\Microsoft.Windows.ShellExperienceHost_cw5n1h2txyewy\TempState\* /q
timeout /t 2 /NOBREAK > nul
start explorer​

note: when running "taskkill /f /im shellexperiencehost.exe" I got the message "ERROR: The process "shellexperiencehost.exe" not found".​

The problem is still not fixed.


Further research has suggested

I go to "settings > troubleshoot > Search and Indexing > run the troubleshooter" but this gives me the message that windows cannot access the specified device or I don't have permissions.​

The file specified is C:\Windows\System32\msdt.exe.​

In widows eplorere I can see the file msdt.exe in C:\Windows\System32. I can't run it even though I have run windows explorer as administrator. A message pops up saying I need to enter a pass key.​

If I open the command line and change the current dir to C:\Windows\System32 and attempt to run msdt.exe I get the same.​

Can you advise as to anything I might have missed?


Thanks


Kevin

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