14 DAY TRIAL // The search feature bundled with Windows went down a few hours ago due to an issue with Bing search, making it impossible for users to search for local files or online information.
The Bing search engine is baked into Windows Search, and the outage impacting the online service caused issues on Windows 10 devices.
Microsoft confirmed the problem, explaining that the culprit was a third-party networking fiber provider that experienced a disruption.
“Users may have been unable to access multiple Microsoft 365 services. Additionally, users who were able to access services may have experienced latency,” the company said.
“We’ve identified a third-party networking fiber provider experienced a network interruption. We’ve rerouted user connections to alternate networking components and confirmed that impact has been remediated after monitoring the environment,” Microsoft added.
According to the software giant, users in Europe were particularly affected by the outage.
A reboot is required to apply the fix
Bing search tied to the Windows search feature has long been a criticized feature, especially because users need to turn to additional settings to disable such functionality and enable only local search.
Bing also powers Cortana, the digital assistant available in Windows 10, so presumably this feature was broken down as well.
Microsoft says that devices where Windows Search stopped must be rebooted to receive the fix and restore the normal behavior.
Additionally, the company says it’s already working on improving the systems to prevent this from happening again.
“We’re reviewing our network redundancy options to find way to prevent this problem from happening again,” it says.
If this means separating the Windows Search from Bing, then this is without a doubt a welcome improvement, as otherwise incidents like this could easily break down a super-helpful Windows feature that many can’t live without.