I usually hit Winkey and start typing whatever it is I’m looking to start; be it a command prompt, Outlook, explorer, or other installed applications and I rarely (read: never) use it for searching the internet.
Sometimes search gets “stuck”… because it’s crashing in the background. Here’s a method to improve performance and reliability of Windows 10 / Windows 11 Search by disabling search box suggestions.
reg add HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer /v DisableSearchBoxSuggestions /d 1 /t REG