Windows Search Appears to be Down, Try This Fix

Here are some ideas on how to (temporarily) fix it

By
Rob LeFebvre
Rob LeFebvre
Writer, Editor
Rob LeFebvre has been a freelance technology writer for 10 years and an educator for 20. His articles have appeared in 148Apps, Cult of Mac, Engadget, and many others.
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Rob LeFebvre
Updated February 05, 2020

What: Windows 10 Search appears to be broken for many users.

How: You might see a blank box when searching your Windows 10 PC.

Why Do You Care: Fixing the issue before Microsoft issues an official patch could let you use the Search function again.

Blank Windows 10 search bar

According to various users and sites around the internet, Microsoft Windows 10 search appears to be down, showing only a blank box where search results typically live.

We noticed that one of our articles about fixing Windows 10 search received a high amount of traffic Wednesday morning, too.

Windows Central attributes the issue to Windows' Bing integration, and offers some steps involving the Windows registry to get things back to working shape. As they note, making sure you have a solid, recent backup of your PC and its registry is important before attempting.

We tested these instructions and found Windows Central's specific list of steps worked on our own machine affected by the Search issue, so be sure and give it a try.

If this more specifically targeted fix doesn't work for you, we've also got a more generalized troubleshooting article on how to fix Search issues on Windows 10.

While there's been no official word from Microsoft, the company tweeted that it was investigating "several Office 365 issues" Wednesday morning.