Tim Slattery wrote:

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.

We took the keyboard, etc, back to the store. The Geek Squad guy
plugged it into his laptop, and it worked fine. But it wouldn't work
on the wife's machine.

So we took it back. And bought another ergonomic keyboard elsewhere.
This one is just a keyboard, we're using the mouse that she used
previously. The keyboard plugs into a USB socket.

And the same thing happens. It works on the logon screen, the session
begins, and then....the keyboard becomes useless. Except for the
"Calculator" screen, which does cause a calculator window to pop up.
We plugged the keyboard into my laptop and it works fine.

I don't get it.

--
Tim Slattery
tim at risingdove dot com