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Comment by __Joker | Hacker News Reader

With all the privacy setting opted in, i.e. no data to be sent to windows 10, I still have Cortona process running on my machine, which I seem to be not able to kill off( not spending any more time doing it as it is only Windows specific works machine, which I rarely use). Is there a option to uninstall Cortona ?

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AFAICT, the process labeled "Cortana" in Task Manager handles search from the taskbar/start menu whether Cortana's actually enabled or not (it's the UI side of the system search service).

Correct. Presumably if Microsoft gave you a way to change the filename, some people would feel happier. Which is actually a bit sad...

Microsoft could do a much better job communicating what exactly is happening and why.

I agree, but there's no evidence that people care. There are hundreds of millions of consumers who don't pay attention, and hundreds of millions of businesses and programmers etc that do get the info they need, and that's the bulk of the market.

There's a smallish number of geeks who can't actually seem to to figure these things out for themselves, but I don't expect that's a financially significant market. Microsoft probably thinks it's reaching them via Mary-Jo Foley, Paul Thurrot, Ed Bott etc, but maybe it's not, and maybe it should do more.

I've read a few guides that say you can use a race condition to kill the process and rename its directory before it automatically restarts itself.

Yes, basically you need to rename C:\Windows\SystemApps\Microsoft.Windows.Cortana_xxxxxxxxx folder. I prefixed mine with an _ character.

That's an old trick from the days when spyware/adware would do the same thing to stop you from removing it. The fact that it's needed now to kill off pieces that come with the OS speaks volumes about what Windows 10 has become...

You can't uninstall Cortana (unless you are on LTSB - in which case, it's not installed)

That said, you can disable Cortana (and have win + s, search up files)

press win + s (which should open the Cortana UI), then press the hamburger menu, go to settings, disable Cortana, and also disable web (Bing) Search.

The last two installs I did, on deadline day, I had to click to enable Cortana.

turn your firewall and look in the logs, Cortana is still calling mothership with _every single privacy setting turned off_

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