Power Cover kills keyboard attachment?

[Jorge Sanchez]

Hey there;

We have a few Surface Pros in the office (3 the organization and 2 that are personal devices, my own included).

The managers who use the SP were complaining about battery life, so we decided to get Power Covers for them. They were working fine for about a week. After that, one of the reported that the power cover no longer types, but the type cover does. Weird thing is, I can take that power cover and use it on my own SP, or any of the other ones, and it works fine.

A few days later, another manager sent me and email that both the Power Cover and Type Cover had stopped working. He brings them in and I try the covers on my own SP and they work fine. Then I test my Type Cover on the malfunctioning device and indeed, it is not working.

The SP had been working OK for months. This only started happening when we gave Power Covers to the users. I'm wondering if there is some kind of incompatibility between the SP and the Power Cover that could potentially kill the keyboard attachment on the Surface?

Thanks for any pointers!

 

[sharpuser]

I've been tracking this issue for awhile. As discussed about halfway through this thread on answers.microsoft.com, the Surface Pro gets confused when the keyboard is removed while the machine is powered off (deliberately or via battery drain), then powered on without the keyboard. The computer then gets confused, and does not detect when the keyboard is reattached.

Or debris around the particular magnet used for the detection, easily fixed. Also discovered to be the problem by some users on that same thread.

Microsoft is apparently working on a solution, not released yet. Fully charging both the SP and the power keyboard seems to fix the problem for now. Headache, but not a reason to panic.