Microsoft to Silence Cortana during Windows 10 Setup

Megalith

Megalith

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Microsoft added Cortana to Windows 10’s setup process last year so users could use their voice to install the OS, but it’s evidently become a pain for system admins and other IT professionals who must hear the virtual assistant’s voiceover every time they set up a new machine. Microsoft is now disabling her voice-over on Windows 10 Pro, Enterprise, and Education.

The video shows what happens if you’re setting up multiple machines, with Cortana narrating the setup experience. Microsoft is now disabling the Cortana voice-over on Windows 10 Pro, Enterprise, and Education. It will still remain on the Home version of Windows 10, in a move that probably should have been the default way this rolled out in the first place.
 
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What we thought we were getting.

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What we really got

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The true struggle
 
Well, I am not surprised that the talking head that is MacOS is not complained about when installing the OS, it is not an Enterprise level OS so very few even notice. :D On a different note, I do not notice this because we use an image where I work.
 
HockeyJon said:
Cor-who? People actually use this voice assistant gimmick?
Click to expand...

It is not gimmick at all. Well, it is not but it is also so badly deprecated now that it is hardly useful anymore. (With Windows Mobile, the integration was really good but, with that gone...…)
 
ManofGod said:
It is not gimmick at all. Well, it is not but it is also so badly deprecated now that it is hardly useful anymore. (With Windows Mobile, the integration was really good but, with that gone...…)
Click to expand...

All voice command systems are useless gimmicks regardless whether Microsoft, Google, Amazon or Apple makes them. They are imprecise, subject to background noise, and in general just make people lazy.

(they can also be the source of humor,though)



And slightly less funny, but..




I'll never trust any voice activated system. I consider them just as much of a silly gimmick as smellovision, 3D TV, and many other dumb ideas that have thankfully mostly died off.
 
When I bought my 16 year old daughter an Omen gaming laptop (what she wanted) for Christmas, one of the things she loved most was setting it up for the first time using Cortana.
 
I cant believe they never thought of this.

I'm guessing that since these are all in one systems like laptops, you can't mute them either? I never had this issue when installing on my desktop, because I just don't have the speakers on during system install, but that could be problematic if your speakers are in your computer like with a laptop.

(I have isntalled Win 10 on 2 laptops over the last couple of years, and I do vaguely remember it being annoying, but I was only doing one at a time, so it wasn't a big problem.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
All voice command systems are useless gimmicks regardless whether Microsoft, Google, Amazon or Apple makes them. They are imprecise, subject to background noise, and in general just make people lazy.

(they can also be the source of humor,though)



And slightly less funny, but..




I'll never trust any voice activated system. I consider them just as much of a silly gimmick as smellovision, 3D TV, and many other dumb ideas that have thankfully mostly died off.
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Finally found that one person who is the reason most of the Back to the Future 2 predictions never happened. :D According to that movie, if it was not voice activated, it was a babies toy. ;)
 
ManofGod said:
Finally found that one person who is the reason most of the Back to the Future 2 predictions never happened. :D According to that movie, if it was not voice activated, it was a babies toy. ;)
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Voice commands have all sorts of problems. Some of them are technologically solveable, others not. Kids who haven't learned to speak well yet, or people with speech impediments are one thing, but background noise is another. Picking up inadvertent commands from random speech is a huge one too.

The biggest issue to me is that voice is a live, active communication tool. Unlike writing where more thought goes into the structure and logical formulation of the search request, voice is going to be less precise, and require more AI interpretation. I don't want AI interpreting anything for me. I liked the good old Google search terms when we were encouraged to use pluses and minuses, quotes for exact phrases etc. etc. so we got exactly what we wanted in our results. Bit by bit this is being chipped away and replaced with stupid over-simplified requests that attempt to decipher what we intended through context, time, (and our enormous advertising profile of things we like). I consider this a wholly negative development.

I want things to be more precise, more thought out, more code, syntax and structure, and less casual voice.
 
Fortunately Cortana is mute on the Insider Fast Ring updates.
 
ManofGod said:
Well, I am not surprised that the talking head that is MacOS is not complained about when installing the OS, it is not an Enterprise level OS so very few even notice. :D On a different note, I do not notice this because we use an image where I work.
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Huh? I’ve installed macOS multiple times and it’s never done that irritating Cortana crap (which you can only mute and not actually disable)

Am I misunderstanding what you’re suggesting?
 
masquap said:
Huh? I’ve installed macOS multiple times and it’s never done that irritating Cortana crap (which you can only mute and not actually disable)

Am I misunderstanding what you’re suggesting?
Click to expand...

You're wasting your time trying to make rational sense of irrational whataboutism trolling. Don't even feed it. MacOS is, as always, utterly irrelevant to Windows users who just want to see Windows 10 eventually reach a point that its an improvement over previous versions.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Voice commands have all sorts of problems. Some of them are technologically solveable, others not. Kids who haven't learned to speak well yet, or people with speech impediments are one thing, but background noise is another. Picking up inadvertent commands from random speech is a huge one too.

The biggest issue to me is that voice is a live, active communication tool. Unlike writing where more thought goes into the structure and logical formulation of the search request, voice is going to be less precise, and require more AI interpretation. I don't want AI interpreting anything for me. I liked the good old Google search terms when we were encouraged to use pluses and minuses, quotes for exact phrases etc. etc. so we got exactly what we wanted in our results. Bit by bit this is being chipped away and replaced with stupid over-simplified requests that attempt to decipher what we intended through context, time, (and our enormous advertising profile of things we like). I consider this a wholly negative development.

I want things to be more precise, more thought out, more code, syntax and structure, and less casual voice.
Click to expand...

Amen to that but I'm afraid these days are gone with all the IoT and AI craze. As much as I love my tech, I don't have a single IoT device in my home and have no desire for that. All speech recognition is disabled even on kids computers too (it doesn't work for them anyway). Time will tell if this is all a fad or not...
 
masquap said:
Huh? I’ve installed macOS multiple times and it’s never done that irritating Cortana crap (which you can only mute and not actually disable)

Am I misunderstanding what you’re suggesting?
Click to expand...

When you go through the setup at login, it speaks to you in a male voice.
 
DPI said:
You're wasting your time trying to make rational sense of irrational whataboutism trolling. Don't even feed it. MacOS is, as always, utterly irrelevant to Windows users who just want to see Windows 10 eventually reach a point that its an improvement over previous versions.
Click to expand...

Nope, and I pointed it out to him what I was referring too. No whataboutism and no trolling, just the facts, as they are.
 
"You're connected! Now, we'll check for any updates!"

*shudder*
always a race to find the mute or volume down button on the keyboard.
 
Am I the only one who still remembers waiting for after the OS is installed to get your soundcard working?

I guess it's a nice convenience to have., but I will be silencing Cortana the next time I have to reinstall.

The upside is, unless I have a hardware problem, I don't need to reinstall Windows EVER. I have two computers that have been running the same install (both upgraded from Win 7) for 8 years.
 
Frobozz said:
"You're connected! Now, we'll check for any updates!"

*shudder*
always a race to find the mute or volume down button on the keyboard.
Click to expand...

I always forget about the annoying feature when I set up the one or maybe 2 systems a month.
Be glad when it's gone.
 
Almost every reinstall I do is a one-off so I have to listen to this every, single, day.

The only thing that makes me upset is that they didn't do it to home as well, because that's the version most users have. This will only offer blessed silence for me on maybe 25% of the systems I work on. So for all you admins out there where every machine you manage is Pro? Congrats. But the rest of us will still live in Cortana hell.

PS - Anyone remember the days when THIS fired up on every install?

 
I would go a stage further and get rid of 80% of that whole initial setup routine. Fine for Joe User that does it the once but for folks that do it for their bread and butter it wears thin real quick. "I just want to use the damn laptop!!!"

Say if you choose a local account (and quit with the "Really? Do you really want to do that?" crap) at the start you just bypass all that other yes no stuff as an assumed NO to all.

Always amazed that MS never thinks about the grass roots support guys that has to deal with hundreds on non corporate machines every year. A few scraps from the table now and then to make our lives easier would be a big boost.

If it wasn't for that fact I have to make a living from it, I'd tell every babyboomer/student I look after to just get a Chromebook.
 
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blandead said:
Funny thing there's a simple GPO or regedit to completely revert the first sign-in garbage and optional Microsoft account.

Should also be a standard setting for non-home editions

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/2411-turn-off-user-first-sign-animation-window-10-a.html
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Used to be you could rely on GPOs and regedits, but in this W10 era, they get ninja-deprecated and stop working suddenly without notice or care from MS.

"Delay feature updates up to X days" a prime example of a GPO MS decided to ignore - I had all my newly built 1709 PCs set to 365 days, and a few weeks later all got force-converted to 1803 in the middle of the night, which caused them to stop working due to 1803 bugs. All required restore from image since rollback resulted in blackscreen. Wasted time and hassle I didn't ask for.

I put zero faith in GPOs or regedits anymore.
 
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Umm, I use the best version of Windows 10. It's called Windows 10 LTSC v1809, you can't buy it hehe. Then again I haven't bought Windows since 95 LMAO. LTSC is the best. It does not include Edge nor any Microsoft Store (Universal Windows Platform, or UWP) apps, whether Redmond-made or third-part, because the browser and those apps constantly change and need updating. Also AWOL: the Cortana voice-activated digital assistant and access to the Microsoft Store.
 
T1125P said:
Umm, I use the best version of Windows 10. It's called Windows 10 LTSC v1809, you can't buy it hehe. Then again I haven't bought Windows since 95 LMAO. LTSC is the best. It does not include Edge nor any Microsoft Store (Universal Windows Platform, or UWP) apps, whether Redmond-made or third-part, because the browser and those apps constantly change and need updating. Also AWOL: the Cortana voice-activated digital assistant and access to the Microsoft Store.
Click to expand...

Oh they refreshed ltsc to version 1809? Gonna have to switch to that
 
blandead said:
Oh they refreshed ltsc to version 1809? Gonna have to switch to that
Click to expand...
Yes they did :D No more LTSB v1607. Which is good because when you do buy a RTX card (at least I hope I can LOL) only 1809 and up will support ray tracing.
 
BUT THE MACHINES I BUILD HAVE WINDOWS 10 HOME! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
 
I'm done a bunch of W10 reformats/re-installs and never head any Cortano audio when installing the OS...there's that Cortana settings window that pops up where you can 'disable' it but I never hear any audio...

I guess it's because I'm using a sound card and the drivers haven't been installed yet...I guess this is for people who use onboard sound
 
T1125P said:
Umm, I use the best version of Windows 10. It's called Windows 10 LTSC v1809, you can't buy it hehe.
Click to expand...

Sure you can:

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fr...rategy+500.TRS0&_nkw=windows+10+ltsc&_sacat=0


Or, for LTSB 2016:

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fr...rategy+500.TRS0&_nkw=windows+10+ltsb&_sacat=0


Advil said:
Almost every reinstall I do is a one-off so I have to listen to this every, single, day.

The only thing that makes me upset is that they didn't do it to home as well, because that's the version most users have. This will only offer blessed silence for me on maybe 25% of the systems I work on. So for all you admins out there where every machine you manage is Pro? Congrats. But the rest of us will still live in Cortana hell.
Click to expand...

To be honest, nobody should be using Win 10 Home in the first place because it isn't a functional enough OS, lacking critical basic functionality like the Group Policy editor and the ability to delay or completely stop Windows updates.
 
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Here's the godamn issue.

Most of y'all complain about having to deal with cortana and I get that. But I ACTUALLY WANTED a competitor to Amazon or Google. I wanted an awesome PC-centric home assistant that I could extend and configure much like any other Windows application: a "configurable, upgradable" Amazon Alexa or Home or Siri.

But NO. Microsoft did what they always do and created a half-assed product with a full ass of advertising that wasted two-asses worth of budget arriving three asses late to the party.

Cortana is freaking USELESS. I would love to have a godamn home assistant that I completely control, that can only use the NIC I assign it, that can utilise much more powerful hardware, that can start STEAM and alert me when games are done DOWNLOADING, tell me my CPU and GPU temps when I ask, kill processes or services via voice command, but NO. it's not even able to search fucking GOOGLE.
 
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I like the idea of what Cortana could provide, I have never actually found a reason to use it, and would prefer that it was an completely optional install.

If I had a Windows tablet hanging in the kitchen for recipes and what not, I could see its usefulness.

Me: Hey Cortana, show me chocolate fudge recipe #6. Also play Two Girls One Cup.

Super handy.
 
termite said:
I like the idea of what Cortana could provide, I have never actually found a reason to use it, and would prefer that it was an completely optional install.

If I had a Windows tablet hanging in the kitchen for recipes and what not, I could see its usefulness.

Me: Hey Cortana, show me chocolate fudge recipe #6. Also play Two Girls One Cup.

Super handy.
Click to expand...
You know, you Kept It Christian™ right up until the end there, then you made a u-turn and drove right into the filth.
 
I just don't get Microsoft anymore. I mean they actually had meetings and discussed "a bouncing circle", and they said "hey I think we're on to something". And we will give the "bouncing circle" a NAME called "Cortana" to make it more personable! And that was what they went with. A bouncing fricking circle with a name...:meh:. My how far we have come.
 
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