How can I make Windows 10 search my settings/control panel items?

Last night I fiddled around with some settings, and now Windows 10 refuses to search my settings. If I search "Settings" it returns a result, if I search Notepad and Chrome - it works fine. But if I search "Activate" or "Update" or "Personalization" - it returns nothing until I press enter and wait a while. How can I restore the settings?

The settings I fiddle around were indexing settings. There's only one item checked now - "Start Menu", and the rest of the settings seem fine, but obviously something's wrong. How can I solve this?

Solution 1:

Ran into the same problem after upgrade from Windows 8.1 Pro. Since there is no official method to reset Indexing Options to the defaults, I just removed the corresponding registry branch. After the whole procedure, Windows restored the branch in its pristine state and the indexing resumed to work properly.

STEPS TO PERFORM:

1. Stop Windows Search service:

   Win + R, services.msc, Enter

   Find the Windows Search entry, click on it, and choose Stop from the left column.

2. Remove the following registry branch in its entirety:

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Search\CrawlScopeManager\Windows\SystemIndex

   You can use the free home edition of Registrar Registry Manager for this.

3. Follow the step #1, but click Start instead of Stop this time.

The service will start and re-create the missing registry branch. This action will effectively set the Indexing Options to their clean default state.

The Control Panel (or Settings) items are now shown in the search results, immediately, but if you feel like to, you can set your own exclusions via the usual Indexing Options interface and even rebuild the index.

Solution 2:

I had one user account this was working for (User1|) & a newer one that it wasn't working for (User2). Copying the files from

C:\Users\User1\AppData\Local\Packages\windows.immersivecontrolpanel_cw5n1h2txyewy

to

C:\Users\User2\AppData\Local\Packages\windows.immersivecontrolpanel_cw5n1h2txyewy

& then rebuilding the index in Indexing Options resolved the issue for me.

Solution 3:

I think I've found the solution to this issue:

Run Lpksetup /u and uninstall any possible duplicate language you find there, restart Windows and wait a few minutes.

Edit: this worked for another user https://superuser.com/a/961510/485791

1. Pin any of the Settings pages to Start.

2. From Indexing Options, Advanced Options, click Rebuild to begin reindexing. Then restart Windows.

Solution 4:

Don't know if it will help anyone else but I just got around this by pinning the Control Panel to the Start Menu and then re-indexing everything.

I then removed the Control Panel from the start menu and I could search the control panel from the start menu.