Patrick Domingues

So your looking to disable Cortana from collecting any information from you? Well then lets go ahead and disable Cortana. We will be diving into the registry to make these changes.

We need to make sure we have a backup of the registry before making any changes, so yes always create a backup of the registry.

1. From the Start menu, type regedit.exe in the search box, and then press Enter. If you are prompted for an administrator password or for confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
2. In Registry Editor, locate and click the registry key or subkey that you want to back up.
3. Click File > Export.
4. In the Export Registry File dialog box, select the location to which you want to save the backup copy, and then type a name for the backup file in the File name field.
5. Click Save.

1. From the Start menu, type regedit.exe in the search box, and then press Enter. If you are prompted for an administrator password or for confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
2.  Using the tree structure in the left panel, navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE_SOFTWARE_POLICIES_MICROSOFT_WINDOWS
3. If there is no 'Windows Search' folder here, create one. Right-click the 'Windows' folder, select New > Key, name it 'Windows Search'
4. Within the Windows Search folder, right-click the blank white space to the right and select New > DWORD (32-bit) Value
5. Rename the new file that appears 'AllowCortana'. Double-click this and a box will appear - set the 'Value Data' to 0
6. Press OK and close the Registry Editor
7. Restart your computer