[Tip]: Cortana can shut down, restart or sleep your PC

Apart from various voice activated features of Cortana, you can now ask Cortana to shut down, restart or sleep your PC.
Windows 10 Fall Creators Update has added this feature.
You can shut down, restart, or sleep your PC simply by saying any of these:

• “Hey Cortana, lock my computer.”
• “Hey Cortana, shut down my computer.”
• “Hey Cortana, restart my computer.”

Windows 10 Tip: Ask Cortana to shut down, restart or sleep your PC

Here’s a small tip. A Cortana feature requested by many.

Did you know you can now ask Cortana to shut down, restart, or sleep your PC? With the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, you can now shut down, restart, or sleep your PC simply by saying any of these:

• “Hey Cortana, lock my computer.”
• “Hey Cortana, shut down my computer.”
• “Hey Cortana, restart my computer.”

Give it a try.

Repairs for Cortana not working in Windows 10 Build 10532

Some Windows Insiders who upgraded to Windows 10 Build 10532 are having issues with Cortana. Cortana was working fine in previous build 10525 but after upgrade to 10532, it has stopped responding. Cortana just sits in ‘Listening...’ mode. I too was facing the same issue but after trying the following method as suggested by Microsoft Support Engineer in Answers, Cortana has started working and is responding now.

So those facing similar issue in build 10532, can try the following methods and see if it helps:

Run DISM command:

• Press Winkey +X or right click on Start
• Select Command Prompt (Admin) to open Admin command prompt
• type the following commands and press enter to execute
  • dism.exe /online /cleanup-image /scanhealth
  • dism.exe /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth
    • these commands may take some time to finish executing,

Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM) is a new command line tool that you can use to service a Windows image or prepare a Windows PE image. The DISM tool replaces the Package Manager (pkgmgr.exe), PEimg, and Intlcfg tools. DISM consolidates the functionality found in those three tools, as well as delivers new functionality to improve the experience of offline servicing.

After these commands finish executing, now try Cortana and see if it starts responding. If issue is still present then try the following Power shell Commands.

Using PowerShell commands:

• Type Windows PowerShell in the search bar
• From the search results, right click on the Windows PowerShell and select Run as administrator.
• Now type the following Commands and execute

Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers |Where-Object {$_.InstallLocation -like "*SystemApps*"} | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}

Now check if Cortana is working or not, if required restart the system and check. For me the Cortana started responding after the 1st method itself. Hope these methods will solve this Cortana issue for you too.

In other related news, if you are from Japan, Australia, Canada or India, check your region settings and change accordingly if you have set it to US. As Cortana will be made available to these region starting from Build 10532. But for India, at the moment Cortana not yet available and responds to ‘Hey Cortana’ as “I Can’t connect at the moment, try again in a little bit’ . Hoping to see it soon updated for India.

Tip: Get some more space on Windows 10 taskbar with Cortana option

If you are one of those who likes to pin various apps, programs on taskbar and in doing so taskbar fills up and you have to scroll to access some of the apps.

Here is a small tip to get back some of the space on taskbar in Windows 10 for pinning more apps. By default, Cortana is shown with a long Search box.

 

 

You can right click on taskbar or on Cortana Search box and choose Cortana > Show Cortana icon

and that will put the Circle icon instead of long Cortana Search box on the task bar thus adding some space to the taskbar. There is an option to even completely hide it but who wants to hide Cortana!

 

Here is the expanded view of the Cortana Search box and icon on taskbar

 

 

 

 

That’s the small tip about Cortana on Taskbar.