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

Anonymous
2023-04-02T21:43:46+00:00

So it's been two days of back and forward with customer support and cannot get a resolution on this issue. Bought a brand new Surface Pro 9 and out of the box have had issues with basic functionality. Initially we thought that the auto rotation was janky but eventually discovered that we could boot up the device without keyboard attached and tablet mode worked great, but once we connected the type cover keyboard and then removed it, the device stays in desktop mode. I've reinstalled a fresh version of the OS three times, run all Windows updates, downloaded and installed the Surface Pro 9 drivers from the Microsoft site, done the 20 second power down... none of it makes any difference.

Anyone have any advice? If I can't solve this I will need to return and repurchase etc, which means I may just go elsewhere, this has been a pretty poor user experience and I was pretty excited for this purchase. Hoping to get some help, much appreciated 🙏

Surface | Surface Pro | Display and screen

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  1. Anonymous
    2023-06-29T19:39:24+00:00

    +1 that KB5027303 (2023-06 Cumulative Update Preview for Windows 11 Version 22H2, OS Build 22621.1928) does not fix the issue for me. Guess it'll be another month at best to see a change.

    Can Microsoft please acknowledge this as a known and tracked issue for Windows, or Surface drivers, and if not please let us know how we can help get debug info to help steer toward resolution.

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  2. Anonymous
    2023-06-16T20:28:19+00:00

    Don't know if this has been mentioned here already - apart from turning it off and on again, there's another, simpler workaround: flip the keyboard to the back of the screen and then detach it. It'll detect tablet mode by flipping it back and will stay in tablet mode when detaching the keyboard.

    Anyway - this really seems to be a simple software fix - any ETA on that Microsoft? The issue is being discussed all over the web at this point. It's somewhat embarrassing for Microsoft with this being one of their flagship products.

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  3. Anonymous
    2023-05-24T02:07:10+00:00

    I have the same issue. Contacted MSFT support, was advised after reinstalling OS, etc. to exchange the Surface Pro 9 for a new one due to a hardware issue. After exchanging it and going through the setup process I was delighted to find the problem was not there and it worked perfectly ... until the next morning! Having a look through the logs, automatic Windows Updates were applied overnight and since then the new one has been in exactly the same state as the first Surface I returned so I too can confirm with certainty it is a bug in one of the updates. From that list of updates, I believe the bug exists in one of these packages as they are the most applicable to the issue from the ones that were installed (excluded solitaire/etc, updates):

    Surface - Firmware - 161.3.0.16

    Surface - Firmware - 6.89.139.0

    Surface - Firmware - 9.12.143.0

    2023-04 Cumulative Update for Windows 11 Version 22H2 for x64-based Systems (KB5025239)

    2023-01 Update for Windows 11 Version 22H2 for x64-based Systems (KB4023057)

    Surface - Firmware - 3.8.0.0

    Surface - Firmware - 3.10.0.3

    Surface - Firmware - 1.25.1865.1

    Surface - Firmware - 93.0.0.49

    2023-04 Update for Windows 11 Version 22H2 for x64-based Systems (KB5026039)

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  4. Anonymous
    2023-05-23T22:01:52+00:00

    The most annoying thing: Microsoft seems not to care

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  5. Anonymous
    2023-05-05T22:29:12+00:00

    Just yesterday I bought Surface pro 9, did all the Windows update and everything worked fine.

    Today I wanted to write some notes on it, after disconnecting the keyboard it did not switch to the table mode and did not allow to rotate the screen, not to mention that the on-screen keyboard was not popping up, which was rather annoying.

    I have reached out to Microsoft support, their support agent was really nice and tried all possible things, unfortunately the issue remained. We did one interesting discovery, when the type cover is disconnected I can just connect power adapter and it fixes it for me. Seems like the Surface is not able to properly recognize disconnection of the Type cover keyboard.

    It is a bit disappointing to see that premium device from Microsoft itself is having such glitch.

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