I think he means the big wide tile on his homepage with the magnifying glass that says search....
You usually get that if you have selected a language that doesn't support Cortana, or you have disabled 'her'.
Couple things, are you in a region that has Cortana? Did you make sure she's flipped "On" in her section of the settings? How about Location, is it on too? Even if they were on, it's possible they got flipped off somehow.