The guide doesn't turn off or remove Cortana so much as uses a race condition to break it. Basically, you attempt to rename the Cortana directoy, inevitably fai

The guide doesn't turn off or remove Cortana so much as uses a race condition to break it. Basically, you attempt to rename the Cortana directoy, inevitably fail, then kill the Cortana process and-then-quickly-click-retry in the error dialog that showed up. If you're fast, you can rename the directory before Cortana can boot and lock it in use again. (I assume you can then purge the directory afterward. Bonus points if there's a way to fubar the directory so that it can't be restored (violent symlinking?))