We just bought a Microsoft "Sculpt Ergonomic Desktop" for my wife's
Dell tower running Windows 8.1. It consists of an ergonomic keyboard,
a mouse, and a separate number pad.

So we brought home plugged the USB nub into a USB port, removed the
little tabs keeping the batteries fresh, turned on the mouse and...

The mouse works fine. The keyboard and number pad don't. Oddly, the
keyboard wordks for typing in the password when she logs in to her
account. But once her desktop appears...nothing. No response from
keyboard or number pad.

One execption: there's a little key on both the keyboard and the
number pad that brings up a a calculator window. That works on both
the keyboard and number pad. Nothing else works. WTF??

We took it back to Best Buy, the Geek Squad guy plugged the USB nub
into his laptop and -- everything works. He says to leave the nub
plugged into the computer for a while, sometimes these gizmos will
download a driver from the Internet. I'm not so sure, but that's what
I'm doing at the moment.

Any ideas?

--
Tim Slattery
tim at risingdove dot com