Keyboard on new Surface Pro 11 does not always pair with unit upon startup

You and I are in the same boat. I also have the Surface Pro 11 with Snapdragon. Detaching and re-attaching the keyboard does cause the Surface to recognize the keyboard. Usually, pressing the start and volume-up button atop the Surface and holding it down until the UEFI screen appears (it takes a little while) and then exiting without making any changes usually brings the keyboard to life as well. I strongly suspect that the issue is with the Surface and/or Windows 11 on the Surface. If other reports about this same problem come in, Microsoft will have to address it.

Having same problem with a non-bluetooth Surface keyboard and ARM Surface Pro 11. Upon startup - randomly- the keyboard is not recognized. The only way to fix is to unsnap keyboard and then snap it back on.

Help?

I've done that with both the original and replacement keyboards. I believe that it always recognized the keyboard in the UEFI screen. A time or two, upon restart into Windows, the keyboard did not pair with the screen. But most of the time, it does. It's an annoying problem. At this point, I am going to see how things go for another few days. The tech at the store I bought the Surface from said that if the problem persisted with the new keyboard, then a look at the computer itself was the next step, which is the same conclusion you reached, so that is what I will do. Thanks.

Hmm…that doesn’t sound normal.

The only thing that I can think of to try is to boot into the UEFI/BIOS first and make sure that the keyboard is working there. You could do this several times in a row to make sure that the keyboard is always detected by the computer itself and then let it boot into Windows. If Windows doesn’t see it after the UEFI/BIOS does, then it’s likely a Windows issue.

To boot into the UEFI/BIOS, you hold down the volume up button and then press and release the power button. Continue holding the volume up button down until you are in the UEFI/BIOS screen on the computer. Don’t change any settings in there, but make sure you can navigate around the screen with the keyboard. Then you can exit the UEFI/BIOS and the computer should boot from there.

I don't use sleep mode, so I have only observed this on startup. I would emphasize that it does not happen on every startup -- maybe one in ten with the first keyboard and twice so far in two days with the new keyboard.