Surface Pro 4 Keyboard not working / type cover keyboard driver missing

Hello all desperate type cover owners ! There's still a hope !

I succeed today to get my keyboard alive and 100% running after a lot of time of loose and a lot of things tried :

• Cleaning
• Uninstall of drivers
• Different installation of Firmwares
• Recovery of windows with keep of files
• Recovery of windows without keeping the files
• Recoveries with redownloading windows from the web
• Hard reset
• ...
• ...

Keyboard was not working during months in Windows (just backlight, fn button led, and volume buttons)

It was however working in the bios, for what can be used in it : arrows, enter, mouse that had to be activated with two fingers)

Finally, a kind of combination of all the attempts has allowed me finally to recover the keyboard in Windows.

I pursued the idea to recreate the situation a type cover has never been attached to the Surface.

01 - With Windows running, remove (disconnect from the physical port) the Type Cover from the Surface

02 - Open "Device manager", go in menu "View" on top and choose "Devices by container"

03 - In the same menu "View", enable "Show hidden devices"

04 - This should make appear a "Surface Type Cover" section in the list, even if the keyboard is not attached to the Surface

05 - For each driver you see under this section and for which you can do it, right clic + uninstall / check the box to delete drivers and validate. Do it for all of them, even wacom, until the "Surface Type Cover" section disappears by itself from the container list.

06 - Then force the Surface to power off and go towards "hard" reset by maintaining the power button during more than 30 seconds (to be sure)

07 - The surface should be off, so run the tablet in UEFI bios by pressing and maintaining Power and (+) buttons

08 - Go in Device menu and disable the last option "Type Cover Port"

09 - Go in Exit menu and touch Restart button

10 - Let Windows start completely and when it's done, again, force power off and go towards "hard" reset by maintaining power button during more than 30 seconds

11 - From its off state, run again the tablet in UEFI bios by starting the tablet with Power + (+) button

12 - Re-activate "Type cover port" in menu Device

13 - Go to "Exit" / "Restart"

14 - Let Windows start properly and attached your Type Cover to the Surface Pro

After I did the last step, Windows recognized it as a new device, took some time to set it up and tell me that is was installed.

The keyboard was fully functional and I was happy.

I hope you'll be too !

Hi There,

I'm having exactly the same issues with the same OS build on a Surface Pro 4. This has only occurred since the last update and I had no issues with the keyboard previously.

I've done all of the steps outlined above and I've tried two other type covers!  I agree with Nick - this is not a hardware issue.  Microsoft please get this sorted for us.

The reason for this problem is the cummulative update that came on about 10 of September.I restore back my surface pro 3 before that update and now my type cover works again.

Hi Janette

I'm getting a bit worried Microsoft has simply given up, leaving me with a device I cannot use.

Can you get back to me, at least just to say someone is looking into it?

To confirm, all the following have been done:

1. Check connection points for dirt
2. Two button reset
3. Updated all Windows
4. Downloaded all drivers and firmware (and installed) - 4 times
5. Used UEMI Restore
6. Done the command prompt as you instructed RestoreHealth 

I also note other users have completely reinstalled windows and that didn't fix the problem

Please help!

Nick

Thanks Nick,

There was also a windows 10 update I took yesterday that was quite in-depth as it took about 30 minutes, and I was hopeful the fix was going to come via this...no alas! When it did the final reboot and loaded the desktop, a notification window popped up saying something like “microsoft type cover keyboard has been successfully installed” which filled me with great optimism....only to be deflated upon attempting to use the keyboard.

I’d be very interested to learn the scale of this issue. How many windows 10 users are having this issue right now? Being as it’s software related, you’d imagine it to be quite significant. 

I think the lack of support and communication from Janette or indeed another representative from Microsoft is absolutely disgraceful. To have repeatedly attempted to troubleshoot this issue via this forum, failed on all counts, then vanish without so much as a word leaving everybody in the dark having to write messages like these on our smart phones because our keyboards STILL DON’T WORK.  There are almost no words.

It’s not usually what happens that matters in the end, it’s how people deal with it that everyone remembers.   And thus far, Microsoft, you’ve done appallingly.

Sincerely,

Disenchanted.

Hi

Yeah there's heaps of people reporting the problem.

I am hoping Janette will come back to me with a solution. Otherwise the device is pretty useless to me.

Nick