The Bluetooth Keyboard Mystery: Solved.

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My wife's got a pretty spec'd out box at home with a 30inch widescreen LCD flat panel and a Microsoft Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. She loves it. But every now and then the keyboard simply stops working. To make matters worse, I can't find my wired keyboard.

This has been going on for months...

Keyboard plays up (ie; you type furiously, and nothing appears onscreen, no matter how hard you whack the keys :)

  • I look for the wired keyboard (again) and can't find it.
  • I open the onscreen keyboard with the mouse, which, for some reason still works.
  • I go to Control Panel --> Hardware --> Bluetooth and see there is an association between the keyboard and computer and the mouse and computer.
  • I delete the associations and re-establish it.
  • Voila.

Yeterday was Monday.

My wife phoned me and said the keyboard was, yet again, not working. Then she said, "have you noticed it fails every monday afternoon?" I said, "No, but now you mention it, I think you're right!"

So here's where she solved the mystery.

Every monday we have Anna the cleaner come round to the house to give the place a spruce up. She cleans the office. She cleans the desk in the office. Anna is very thorough, she lifts up everything on the desk to clean it, and that includes the keyboard. Under the keyboard, dead center and toward the rear of the keyboard is a Bluetooth reset button. Have a guess what happens? When she lifts the keyboard to clean it, she resets the keyboard, and breaks the Bluetooth association!