How to Uninstall or Reinstall Cortana in Windows 10

By Timothy Tibbetts

on 06/19/2023

Hop into IObit’s Easter Sale and save up to 90% on top utilities, plus score 3 FREE months before the deal disappears! 🐰🌷🏆

Starting in Windows 10 version 2004, Microsoft has simplified how you can uninstall or reinstall Cortana if it's not working properly.

If you're having any problems with Cortona, including 549981C3F5F10 errors, resting Cortana is safe and straightforward.

Video tutorial:

We can reset Cortana in Settings, or if that method fails or Uninstall is grayed out, we can use PowerShell.

1: Uninstall and Reinstall Cortana in Settings

Click Start > Settings > Apps.

Click on Cortana, then Advanced options.

Scroll down, and you have three options to choose from, depending on your needs. We try each step, in order, until your problem is fixed.

1: Repair - Repair will try to fix Cortana without losing any data and should fix your problem.
2: Reset - Reset will repair Cortana, but also delete and data.
3: Uninstall - Completely uninstall Cortana. You can now reinstall Cortana.

2: Uninstall and Reinstall Cortana With PowerShell

Open PowerShell as Admin and type in:

Current user - Get-AppxPackage *Microsoft.549981C3F5F10* | Remove-AppxPackage
All users - Get-appxpackage -allusers *Microsoft.549981C3F5F10* | Remove-AppxPackage

Now, let's reinstall Cortona.

You can now download Cortana from the from MajorGeeks.

Click on Get and follow the prompts.

If that method fails, we can reinstall Cortana with PowerShell.

Open Powershell as Administrator.

Open PowerShell, as Admin and type in:

Get-AppXPackage -Name Microsoft.Windows.Cortana | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)AppXManifest.xml}

It should look like this:

Press Enter.

Similar:
How to Disable Cortana in Windows 10
How to Prevent Cortana from Running in the Background
Cortana 'Ask Me Anything' Not Working