Chronic problem with Cortana crashing

[rjl2001]

Since sometime around the beginning of this year, Cortana on my phone has been pretty much unusable. I never realized how often and regularly throughout the day I tap the magnifying glass on the bottom right when I want to enter a search or type a Cortana command. The Cortana screen appears normally but most often when I type something in the box and hit enter, it immediately exits and returns to the home screen. I usually tap the search icon again to try once more, and the same result will happen multiple times in a row. However, sometimes it doesn't crash and the web results for my search will appear... for about 1 to 2 seconds before the page closes and goes back to the home screen. I estimate maybe 10% of the time it will work normally without crashing. I usually feel like a fool because I'll be around other people when I try to search something we want to know, and either I have to repeatedly type the search 4,5,6, times before it works, or worse yet it flashes the answer or results on the screen for one second to tease me before it disappears.

I bought my phone on Black Friday, and it never had this problem at first. Probably sometime around New Years it started acting like this, and I just put up with it and assumed MS would release a fix ASAP. Well obviously that hasn't happened, and since that is a key feature to me I've been VERY close to just reverting back to my 1020 and hide my 950 until some more updates are released. If I open Edge and type a search in there it always works normally, but that's not the same as Cortana obviously.

Anyone else having this problem? Should I go to a MS Store and see what they can do about a refund/replacement?
This issue also affects the use of my Band 2 which I bought a couple weeks after the 950.

 

[gpobernardo]

This has happened to me also, and I'm not using a Lumia 950. So it's most probably a software issue... if not an Internet connection issue.

This only happens when I'm using a slow and unstable Internet connection. When speeds are good, this almost rarely happens.

At any rate, you may report this in the Windows Feedback app, or UpVote if the issue has already been reported.

 

[Alroy Swain]

Same for me. 950xl. Worked briefly since the new build from last week 10586.71, but today the bug returned. Most annoying as I use search/Cortana constantly on my phone.

 

[aar494]

Same for me in my 950xl... When will they sot all this

 

[smartass1379]

I'm having similar issues on lumia 950 ATT build .71

 

[rjl2001]

So sounds like it wasn't just me then. I did decide to do a total reset on my phone a couple weeks ago, and did not restore from a previous backup but instead started from scratch. I will say that since that reset I have not had the same problem with Cortana constantly crashing. The phone still has plenty of bugs and has restarted itself a few times in the last week or two since the refresh. So at least now I feel like I can live with the phone the way it is, in anticipation of updates that will help the stability. And who knows... one day it may be as stable as WP 8.1 which it replaced.

 

[Bjfcm]

[950 AT&T OWNER ]I thought it was only me. Cortana is Sad!!!!!I have been positive since Windows changed ..I refuse to say what is good .. Its 2016.. I rather not have the feature( Cortana)

OK Google- Indigo - Siri --all out perform Cortana... I really Hate that!!!! lmao... I don't want Android I have never held an IPhone..I cannot wait for a NON MICROSOFT WINDOWS 10 PHONE!!!!

 

[Alroy Swain]

a hard reset fixed it for me too, Cortana works perfectly now