Is your Cortana disabled by company policy? It is an odd little error caused by the interdependence of Cortana but there’s an easy way to fix it in Windows 10.
What is causing ‘Cortana is disabled by company policy’ bug?
Operating systems are incredibly complex pieces of software, with hundreds upon thousands of components which work with one another to deliver a complete computing experience. Windows 10 is no different.
When you build something this complex, it is expected some system components will have odd dependencies on other system components. Such is the case with the “Cortana is disabled by company policy” error.
According to our online research, this error is being shown to users even though they have their own personal computer which is clearly not operated by any company or IT department.
We’ve discovered two system settings that – on the surface – appear to be unrelated to this error but can still get Cortana working back again.
Fixing Cortana’s… Disability
The screenshot above shows the ‘Cortana disabled by company policy’ error. It is extremely annoying for a lot of people since Cortana really does make life easier. You can dictate messages to her, instantly set reminders, call or text people, sleep or shutdown your PC, and of course ask her general questions.
We’ve discovered two potential solutions for this error. We’ve heard successful reports of either working for people. You are free to explore either and see which one works for you!
Step 1: Launch the Settings app in Windows 10. You can do this by searching for it from the big search bar in the taskbar, or you can open up the Start menu and go into the all apps list.
Step 2: With the Settings app open, click on the lock icon to open Privacy related settings in Windows 10.
This is where we meet a fork in the road. As I said, there are two potential solutions. We recommending trying one, and checking if it fixes Cortana. If it does, great! You can leave a nice comment in the section below. If it doesn’t, try the other solution. If either solution doesn’t work, please leave a comment below and we’ll try to find something better for you.
Solution #1: Get Cortana to know you better
Step 3A:
Within Privacy, navigate to Speech, inking & typing. Over here, you will need to enable the setting to allow Windows and Cortana to get to know you better.
Privacy-conscious users might not like the sound of this, but we think it’s safe to trust Microsoft’s algorithms for analyzing your contacts, speech, typing patterns, etc. so you can make better use of Cortana. After all, Cortana is a virtual assistant, and assistants work best when they deeply understand their master.
While this is enabled, you will also want to enable location from Action Center.
Solution #2: Enable Enhanced Device Data Feedback
Step 3B:
If Solution #1 didn’t work for you, then scroll down a little further within the Privacy settings to Feedback & diagnostics. Over here, look for the option of “Send your device data to Microsoft” you will get a drop down box with the options of “Basic, Enhanced, and Full (Recommended)“, ignore full and choose Enhanced.
This sounds like an odd way to fix a completely unrelated bug but trust us – this has actually fixed it for many!
We recommend you to restart your Windows 10 computer after the trying either solution. When you log back into Windows, you will notice that Cortana is working once more and the annoying ‘Cortana disabled by company policy error’ is now a worry of the past!
The above was done on a peers laptop and the above steps did help in resolving the problem. If this worked for you, let us know in the comments section.
The post Fix ‘Cortana Disabled By Company Policy’ Error In Windows 10 appeared first on Windows Clan.
