Can’t type in search box Windows 10
The search box in Windows 10 is a great feature that I use daily. It allows me to quickly find and open programs, settings and options, and more. This also means I don’t need to clutter my desktop with program shortcuts. Overall it’s probably one of my favorite features in Windows 10.
Unfortunately I ran into a problem where I couldn’t type in the search box. I’ve also had support calls from clients running into this same problem. While I haven’t figured out what causes this issue and why I keep getting support calls from people who can’t type in the search box, and you’ll even see many I can’t type in Windows 10 search bar posts on Microsoft’s community. I do have a fix for the problem.
Can’t type in Windows 10 search box? Restart Cortana.
Right click on the Taskbar and select the option to open the Task Manager.
Click on the top of the Name column to sort all running processes by name to make searching easier.
Find Cortana in the list, select it and click the End Task Button.
Close the task manager and click on the Windows 10 search box to restart the Cortana process and see if it’s now working.
Restart the Windows file explorer.
Right click on the Taskbar and select the option to open the Task Manager.
Click on the top of the Name column to sort all running processes by name to make searching easier.
Find Windows Explorer in the list, select it and click the Restart Button.
If you can’t type in the search box, fix it with these easy to follow steps.
- 1. Right click on the start icon.
2. Click on the Windows PowerShell (Admin) option to open PowerShell.
3. In the blue PowerShell window type the command I’m including below then click Enter to run the command. In PowerShell you can paste by right-clicking, so optionally you can copy the command here and right click in PowerShell to paste, then hit Enter on your keyboard.
$manifest = (Get-AppxPackage Microsoft.WindowsStore).InstallLocation + ‘AppxManifest.xml’ ; Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register $manifest
4. The command only takes a second to complete. Once done close PowerShell and try the search box. In a few instances I’ve had to restart the computer after running the command before the search box worked again.
