Surface Pro 9 won't enter tablet mode after disconnecting the type cover

Marrion,

I am experiencing the same issue and followed your troubleshooting steps but I was not able to get the rotation lock issue to disappear.

I have found a way to bypass the the issue but it is extremely annoying.

If you have the keyboard connected the rotation lock is greyed out. If you disconnect the keyboard the rotation lock continues to be greyed out and does not go away.

If you then press the power button to put the surface to sleep and then press again to wake while the keyboard is disconnected the surface will wake in tablet mode and rotation works as expected. The keyboard appears when you click into a box and you can rotate the display as expected.

If you then reconnect the keyboard the rotation lock once again is greyed out.

Regards

Aidan

This is not a solution.

Microsoft needs to accept this is a bug and remediate it to provide us the functionality we all expect. Saying to turn the power off and back on is at best a workaround and not the performance we should accept from a >$2000 device.

I purchased mine months ago, returned it once over their poor direction it was a hardware issue and have had to live with this bug ever since. @Marrion - you're quite active on this thread, is there not a resource that can be escalated to within Microsoft to identify the root cause and actually release a software update to resolve this issue? Given the tablet mode functionality works briefly as expected from a clean Windows 11 install until the latest updates are applied, it is 100% a software bug.

Marrion_Y - is this issue getting escalated to the Surface Pro development team for triage and resolution? Clearly it's a general problem affecting many or all users that wants to use Surface Pro 9 as a combined laptop and tablet, and it would serve Microsoft best to confirm the issue and that work has started on a resolution.

I too can confirm this issue with my Surface Pro 9!

As others, I already had the first SP9 and returned it again for a refund, after online support gave up fixing the issue - we tried everything mentioned here, including running diagnostics, reinstalling drivers and reinstalling Windows 11, all with no results. So concluding it was a hardware issue, rather than getting a refurbished SP9 back as the repair, I returned the device. Immediately afterwards buying another new SP9 expecting it to be an individual hardware error, but found the new one had exact same issue right on first usage.

Can also confirm the mentioned workarounds that are impractical and goes against the whole reason of buying a Surface Pro as a 2-in-1 device of laptop and tablet. Either flipping the keyboard backwards first before removing to trigger the tablet mode. Or switching the SP9 to standby or hibernate and turning it back on will make it go into tablet mode, if the keyboard is not attached when resuming. So definitely, the device can detect the keyboard has been removed - as also confirmed by one other post of device manager showing the removal of two keyoard devices.

One new thing I can add is, that I had a fully working Surface Pro 8 to compare and test with also. Swapping keyboards back and forth between the two confirmed, that neither keyboard would trigger tablet mode on removal on the SP9, and both keyboards would trigger it on the SP8, confirming the issue is with the tablet or software / drivers, and not with the keyboard.

Received my second SP9 yesterday and now torn if I should return that also for a refund, unless there's very quickly a very strong statement this issue is recognized, reproducible and will be corrected ASAP. This functionality is core to why I chose a Surface Pro over other device types.

I have the same glitch and recently bought the device. A really unacceptable glitch but definitely software related as I exchanged my device and the glitch persists. One thing that works for me is if I move the keyboard to the back of the device before removing it, it will stay in tablet mode.