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side buttons on pen stopped working

hughlle

Super Moderator
Staff member
i just thought id mention this in case anyone else has experienced such an issue.

A few weeks ago, my pens side buttons stopped working completely. Because the pen still wrote, microsoft considered it a hardware failure, and posted me a free pen with no request for me to return the old one.

Since the new pen arrived, i troed the old one a few times, still broken. Today however, i grabbed the spare faulty pen just to make a note, and lo and behold, the buttons work perfectly. The only change has been that there was a system update i installed today (not necessarily a new update, i can only update when i can)

in short, if you had this button issue, get that pen out and try again, just in case. I now have a spare perfectly functional pen and it didnt cost me a penny. Given that i didnt touch it between the time it was faulty, and then functional, im left wondering why this is.
 

Liam2349

Active Member
Could be that you restarted your Surface, some software change or something. Usually replacing the pen batteries fixes that sort of stuff though.
 
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hughlle

Super Moderator
Staff member
Could be that you restarted your Surface, some software change or something. Usually replacing the pen batteries fixes that sort of stuff though.

I tried everything. The only conclusion microsoft came to was that it was a pen hardware issue. Hence the free pen. Their support page even states that if the pen writes, but the side buttons dont work, then there is absolutely nothing to pursue other than contacting customer support.

This is simply a thread for anyone out there who got a new pen after the buttons stopped working, to state that i just re tested, and all of sudden, it works flawlessly again. The only change was that i recently had a windows update. Pen and software-wise, nothing was changed, the pen has been sat in a drawer, and nothing changed on the device.
 
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