14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft's personal assistant Cortana is being impacted by an unknown bug on Windows 10 Mobile devices that causes it to crash instantly when any search string is entered.
Posts on reddit confirm that the very same issue is being experienced on all Windows 10 Mobile devices, including the new Lumia 950 and 950 XL models, but also those running Windows Phone and enrolled in the Windows Insider program. It appears that only handsets running Windows 10 Mobile 10586.29. and 10586.36 are currently hit by the Cortana issue.
Searching working fine in Edge
The problem first showed up a few hours ago and users claim that searching in Edge browser seems to be working fine, which points to a server-side issue with Cortana.
“Search from the Edge address bar works as expected as well Cortana can open Edge when selecting a story from the feed. Restart, soft reset - volume down + power -, closing all Edge tabs and apps, clearing browser and Bing cashes have no effect. This started this evening around 7:30PM EST. Anyone else having problems?” reddit user chadiswar explained.
Rebooting the phone appears to fix the problem for a second, but at the second try, Cortana is crashing once again. Microsoft has not acknowledged the issue, but since it's a server-side bug, the company is most likely working to fix it as we speak.
Cortana is Microsoft's personal assistant for Windows 10 devices and is available on both PCs and smartphones running the new operating system. Right now, the feature seems to be down only on smartphones, as it works normally on PCs and laptops powered by Windows 10.
We've reached out to Microsoft to find out whether the company is experimenting with something new or it's just a bug hitting Cortana and we’ll update the article should we receive an answer.