Hi Jerry,

Go through this entire steps and then see which one or more of these suggestions may apply in your case.

Sign out and Sign in
Sign out and Sign in or restart your PC and see if the problem goes away.

Automatic Repairs
If your PC prompts for Automatic Repair, continue with it and let Windows carry it out.

Kill and restart the Cortana process
If you find that Cortana is not working properly, the best thing to do would be to kill Cortana process and restart the process via Task Manager. If it were a minor runtime error, Cortana would just take a restart to fix it.

Disable Antivirus software
Some security software are known to create this issue – Avast for instance. Disable it and see if it makes the problem go away. If your security software is the culprit, make sure you are using its latest version – else you may want to change it.

Windows Search Troubleshooter
Open Control Panel > All Control Panel Items and click on Find and fix problems with Windows Search to open the Windows Search Troubleshooter. Run it and follow the wizard.

Create a new User Account
The problem might be associated with your Microsoft credentials. Try creating a new username and password and see if you can fix the Cortana. We need to remember that Cortana will not be switched on automatically and needs to be enabled on by selecting Cortana button on the taskbar.

Re-register the Cortana app
After the November Update, if you use this method to fix this problem using the Appx PowerShell cmdlet, it caused problems with your Windows Store apps. But if you have installed Windows 10 Anniversary Update, it is working now – I have personally tried this – Admin. 1 July 2016.
Open an elevated Powershell prompt, type the following command and hit Enter:
Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}

You can also open Task Manager > File menu > Run new task. Type powershell and select the Create this task with administrative privileges check box and click OK to open a PowerShell prompt

I hope this helps.

Regards,
Lokesh