Of course, emailing TE about any of this is useless as they never respond to any emails that are not transaction related.
I used to think this way too, but recently got a very detailed email from them regarding trying to lube up one of the shift stabilizer bars. I was honestly really impressed with the level of detail that it had, including multiple links to the correct grease for keyboards and several pictures explaining what to do.
So, I have to say that I've changed my opinion of their communication lately. Now, it did take awhile for them to get back with me, but overall, good on them.
Regarding Windows not recognizing the keyboard until you replug it, my friend had the same problem here at the house, but only with one of his boards. The other one seemed not to have that issue.
I had my own strange issue where my keyboard suddenly became super-slow to be recognized on boot but would eventually come up after 3-5 minutes. This happened through multiple reboots and with several boards, TE and Leopold. It turned out that shutting down and pulling the power cord out of the tower cleared the problem. I didn't know that a mother-board could get into that kind of stale state which would affect the USB hub, but apparently it can. Obviously, the symptoms of my issue and yours are totally different, but have you tried a total power down like this on your desktop or laptop? On a laptop, you could get the same thing by removing the battery.