Worst part is it keeps running in the background hogging memory and cpu even when completely disabled. I've tried gpedit, shutup10 and so many other tools to get rid of it but somehow it comes back every time :/
I don't think you want to disable this "cortana".
It reminds me of when Microsoft was dead set on conflating the file manager “explorer” and Internet Explorer.
Can someone justify this?
From the programming standpoint, a monolith can be splitted in components, but compiled/bundled/linked to a single executable. This doesn't violate the seperation of concern. It's bad taste/marketing/whatever.
I checked on my Windows and they did separate Cortana and the Search/Start menu recently.
(Well, it gone on my PC and I did nothing in particular). It was the annoying assistant, and the start menu.