Earlier this year I got aSamsung Ativ Tab running Windows 8 RT. After a couple of weeks I got the HP ElitePad 900 running Windows 8 Pro shipped, only to figur that the on-screen touch keyboard were missing from the desktop, and more frustrating I had to use the on-screen keyboard (the one embedded for years in Windows) to type in Word etc. I knew it were there since I’ve been using it for weeks on my Samsung Ativ, but how do I get it back?
Add keyboard shortcut
One of the fastest way to get it back is simply to rightklick on the start meny –>select Toolbars –> Select Touch keyboard (Berøringstastatur).
This way, you will add the shortcut for using the keyboard while beeing in desktop-mode.
Now the shortcut is in place
Restart service
In my case, it was the TabletInputService that froze and in order to restart this you can do this in two different ways
- GUI: If you are a GUI kind-of person (like most Windows users are), lookup the services.msc app and run it. Look for the TabletInputService –> right-click and select restart.
Do make sure that this service starts with Windows, double-click the service, and see that the Startup type is set to automatic - Command-line: Most people haven’t really tried out the awesome PowerShell tool launched in 2006 and embedded with both Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.
In order to do the enire GUI-process in one-line, simply start PowerShell with administrative privileges and type: stop-service tabletinputservice followed by the start-service tabletinputservice
If it won’t work out for you after restarting the service – do a reboot.
– Alex