Last Updated on April 1, 2017 by Mathew Diekhake

I’ now 8 months into owning the Surface RT tablet that I use as a laptop. While I did hear the Surface Pro was the device to own, I refused to pay the asking price; instead settling for the Surface RT in the 64 GB variant. I could go on for hours about my experiences thus far, but none would be relevant.

What is relevant, however, is the fact that I did just buy the Surface Type 2 cover from eBay to pair with my original Surface RT tablet — that I like to call laptop. The cover arrived in the mail and it looked every bit as advertised — sleek, modern, appetizing to touch.

Windows Surface RT

I quickly opened it out of the box and slapped it to go with my tablet. It worked fine; the trackpad (mouse) was working. I went to log in to my account using my password and the keys wouldn’t work.

This seems odd. the mouse trackpad is working but the keys won’t type. My first thought was to reconnect the Type 2 Cover with the Surface RT tablet. I did that, but it didn’t help. My next solution was to go searching on the internet for a solution and here’s what I found worked for me:

Requirements:

  • You’ll need to set yourself aside a spare 20 minutes at least while your tablet resets. You do not wipe any data; you do not need to backup any data. However, we must apply a reset. I’ll show you how that’s done below.

How to fix the Surface Type Cover 2 not working after connecting it to the Surface tablet

  1. Firstly, since you cannot log in, use the touch screen to bring up the keyboard and log in to your user account with the keyboard on the tablet display.
  2. Swipe to the left from the right side of the screen to reveal the Settings.
  3. Tap the Settings option.
  4. Look toward the button on the Settings and tap the ‘Change PC settings’.
  5. Now tap the ‘Update and recovery’ option.
  6. Tap the ‘Recovery’ option.
  7. Click the first option from the next screen that says ‘Refresh your PC without affecting your files’. Click the ‘get started’ button beneath it.
  8. You can read the description that lets you know you’re about to reset the PC and none of the files will be affecting during this time.

Now just sit back and wait while your PC is reset. As I said earlier, this can take 20 minutes or even longer depending on how much information needs to be reset.