I have found over the past few months while working on setting default setting for all users that I somehow broke Windows 10 Spotlight. I was able to get bits and pieces back working, but not fully restored until now. There are a few registry settings that got changed and or created and it required a reset of Windows spotlight as well. I have seen numerous fixes regarding spotlight not working right and there is an important piece that was missing. The registry settings. I am not saying this is all the registry settings that will break spotlight, however, it is what I found while working on my Windows 10 defaults for all users. I am providing a bat type of file for the fix of what I know which is more than I found scouring the net. I will go over them in order of what to do.

1. Goto Settings - Personalization - Lock Screen: Set the Background to either Picture or Slide show.
2. Run the file called W10SpotlightFix.cmd from this repository as Administrator.
3. Goto Settings - Privacy - Background apps: Make sure EDGE and settings are on
4. Reboot your machine.
5. Log back into the profile in which you ran the fix.
6. Goto Settings - Personalization - Lock Screen: Set the Background Back to Spotlight.
7. Log off or reboot the machine.
8. Log back on with the profile you have been using.

Please note these changes could take several minutes to refresh spotlight. You can open the file location below and you should see the files start re-populating after a few minutes. %USERPROFILE%/AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.Windows.ContentDeliveryManager_cw5n1h2txyewy\LocalState\Assets

I cannot say that this will fix your Windows 10 Spotlight issues, but it is a great start, and is a combination what i found in several articles, and my personal experiences fixing Spotlight with the registry settings that I altered that accidentally created the issue. So if you modified the registry setting I have listed in the fix, then it is a good bet you broke Windows 10 Spotlight by accident.

References:

• https://www.techsupportall.com/windows-spotlight-not-working-fix-it-easily/
• https://www.intowindows.com/fix-windows-spotlight-not-working-in-windows-10/
• https://windowsreport.com/windows-10-spotlight-issue/
• https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/wiki/Markdown-Cheatsheet