Why does Cortana and Search not work in the UK?

[Windows Central Question]

I have recently upgraded to Windows 10. I cannot get Cortana and Search to work properly or at all in the UK, after following a lot of advice on other Forums including the Microsoft Community.

It has been complicated, but it boils down to to this: if region, language, speech settings are for the UK Cortana reports that she is not available to help in the region selected (she should be!) plus the keyboard does not work properly (eg @, \ and other characters are on the wrong keys) ; if the settings are for the USA Cortana makes an appearance but (not surprisingly) everything she offers up is American ---- search results (when it works), news, prices / currency, events. The keyboard however is OK.

I have (following advice) tried setting everything to UK except the 'input method' ie. I have selected the US QWERTY key board. That does not work.

A further problem is that Search often does not work but generates the 'class not registered' error.

I do shut down and re-launch after changing settings, as advised.

I have spent many frustrating hours on this, so I hope someone can point me in the right direction.