When Microsoft released Windows 10, everyone was excited about the new features – especially about the Siri killer Cortana. But Cortana did not really turn out to be what people expected from all the hype. It uses too much processor power and interferes in everyday user activities. Even when you disable Cortana from the settings, it keeps running “SearchUI.exe” in the background which further eats away some of the RAM available on the system. And they have designed the process to never stop and automatically restart even when you try to kill it using the Windows Task Manager or the Process Explorer.
But there is one way to stop and prevent SearchUI.exe from running in Windows 10. If you do not really need Cortana or its various processes from running on your system all the time, then perhaps you would want to use this method to disable SearchUI.exe too:
- Start elevated command prompt. In order to do so, press the Win+X key combination and then choose Command prompt (Admin) from the menu that shows up on your screen.
- In the command prompt window type these commands one at a time, pressing Enter after each one of them (and be very quick):
cd %windir%\SystemApps\Microsoft.Windows.Cortana_cw5n1h2txyewy
takeown /f SearchUI.exe
icacls SearchUI.exe /grant administrators:F
taskkill /f /im SearchUI.exe
rename SearchUI.exe SearchUI.exe.001 - If the commands fail at one time, then repeat them many times until the SearchUI.exe is renamed successfully.
Alternatively, you can download the ready-made batch-script https://trishtech.com/downloads/kill-searchui.zip and extract its contents to a folder on your PC. Then right-click on the kill-searchui.bat and select Run as administrator from the context-menu.
You would see a small command prompt window flash on your screen for a second and then SearchUI.exe will stop running on your PC. Of course, after this, you would not be able to make any good use of Cortana in your Windows PC. But that is all up to you to decide whether you want Cortana or a better performing PC.
How to Restore SearchUI.exe Back?
Many people have asked how can they restore SearchUI.exe back. In order to restore it, you have to rename the SearchUI.exe file back to it’s original name.
- Start elevated command prompt. In order to do so, press the Win+X key combination and then choose Command prompt (Admin) from the menu that shows up on your screen.
- In the command prompt window type this command and press Enter:
cd %windir%\SystemApps\Microsoft.Windows.Cortana_cw5n1h2txyewy
rename SearchUI.exe.001 SearchUI.exe - Restart Windows and SearchUI.exe will begin working again.