How to fix broken auto-rotate on your Windows tablet

As an operating system that supports both tablets and traditional PCs, Microsoft’s Windows has auto-rotate functionality as well. Sometimes, either due to an upgrade that’s been botched or a buggy reinstall, Windows may break your device’s autorotate feature. By broken I mean break it so hard it’s no longer offered in the Windows action centre, nor the Settings app. In such an extreme case, here’s how you can get it back.

How to force auto-rotate on your Windows slate

1. Open the Registry Editor by typing Regedit into the search bar.
2. Copy and paste the following into the address bar and click enter: ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\AutoRotation ‘
3. Now, check that the following values are there and properly assigned:
   1. Enable: 1
   2. LastOrientation: 0
   3. SensorPresent: 1
   4. SlateEnable :1
4. If any are missing, you can create them manually by double-clicking the Autorotate key in the registry, selecting Create New DWORD and then assigning it its name and value as above.