I've done many searches on this problem and it seems it was more prevalent a year ago. However, it just happened to me on one of my devices. One still works. The other doesn't. Suddenly, Cortana stopped responding to certain questions or commands. Like "Can you hear me?" She used to say "I can hear you." Or "Tell me a joke." Now, she opens an Edge search page. She still responds to certain commands like "Open Program X." I have tried every solution that I found. None have worked. I even restored the computer to a date of weeks ago. Now, she tells jokes but the other stuff still doesn't work. I know this is not critical. But it should work and I don't know why it stopped working. Cortana has always been a little flaky but never this bad. Does anyone know anything I can try? Thanks.
SOLVED Cortana isn't working right
- Thread starter kstuebing
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Thanks for the reply.I just posted this yesterday. I did try to have it relearn my voice. It is just certain things it does on my other devices, it won't do on the one. It does tell me jokes now since I did a restore. But if I say "Can you hear me?", it tells me about some music I can listen to. Before it would always say "I can hear you." I usually do say that because it's so flaky on every device I need to know if it's even working before I give a command. Even on my other devices it would stop responding occasionally but always came back. This time it's only partially back. And I know this is not critical and most people don't even use Cortana with voice commands but I do and I want it to work right. And it bugs me that it doesn't.
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Maybe try: Settings -> Time & Language -> Speech -> "Recognize non-native accents for this language.
I don't know your nationality, but I know from the early day's, Cortana always had trouble with my Australian accent when it was set to US.
Hope this helps.
I don't know your nationality, but I know from the early day's, Cortana always had trouble with my Australian accent when it was set to US.
Hope this helps.
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Maybe boosting the mic would help. Right-click the speaker icon in the notification area. If all else fails and you don't have a laptop you might try buying a new mic - I favor the ones that go on your head with a boom to in front of your mouth. Luck.
Thanks. It got me thinking. I did solve the problem but I'm not sure how. I did two things. Went to location which was set to US and clicked on US again. And then in settings for Cortana, I turned off web search history. It is now working again as it was before.
Thank you. It's not a question of whether Cortana is hearing me or not. She is hearing me and understanding what I say. She was just coming up with the wrong answers. I did get it working as I mentioned in another response. But I have no idea why what I did made it work. So for the record in case anyone else encounters this, try all the other suggestions first. What I did was go to location and reapply my location of US and I also disabled web search history.
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In my case, Cortana has worked perfectly for nearly a year, but just recently she began answering questions by opening a web site, not by speaking. If I go through relearning my voice, she responds by voice. She obviously hears what I say, and also my speakers are working fine. I have tried switching her off and on again, resetting my location, language and speech, but still no solution. Can one uninstall Cortana and then reinstall? I have my location etc as UK. Maybe I should try the US instead? Please advise what other steps I could try!
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I have always had issues of varying degrees with Cortana. Usually a restart or relearn my voice would work. This symptom was brand new for me. When I googled it I found it was really prevalent on the earlier builds of 10. I wonder if an upgrade is causing this.
I set restore points once a week when everything is working. So when this happened to me, I first did a system restore to before the update. That worked partially. Then in Cortana settings I disabled web search history and that fixed the rest. I have no idea if this will help or not. I can only relate what I did. Some people have indicated location may be part of the problem to so you could try setting it to the US. But won't that mess up your time?
But if you Cortana to remind you of an appointment at a certain time, wouldn't it effect that? At any rate, you should just be able to set your own country.
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I agree! But if the time zone is set correctly it shouldn't have any effect on Cortana time notifications.
UTC / GMT is the basis for local times worldwide.UTC is the time standard commonly used across the world, the world's timing centers have agreed to keep their time scales closely synchronized.
The only exception is the Internet time zone., It uses the decimal time system standard. Therefore, there is no need for time zone conversions, the Internet Time is the same everywhere and is used for synchronizing computers.
UTC / GMT is the basis for local times worldwide.UTC is the time standard commonly used across the world, the world's timing centers have agreed to keep their time scales closely synchronized.
The only exception is the Internet time zone., It uses the decimal time system standard. Therefore, there is no need for time zone conversions, the Internet Time is the same everywhere and is used for synchronizing computers.
Yes, you're right. I have no idea why sometimes changing location works to fix Cortana. Anything is worth a try, I guess. I have the heard the Anniversary edition is going to have major updates for Cortana. If mine fails again, I'll probably just wait for that and hope it fixes it. It really is kind of baffling.