Sager NP8275 backlit KB, vs. Windows 10

I did a bit of searching about this topic here, and didn't come up with anything... I registered here pretty much just to post about this. I don't know if there are others here in the same boat, but if they are I think I can do a little bit to help.

I did the windows 10 upgrade this past weekend, and was not surprised to find that the backlit keyboard control no longer worked. I got an error message about the driver being incompatible every bootup. The 8275 has no windows 10 drivers available (it appears there are no win 10 drivers for any of the older 8 color keyboards), but some of the newer models with the RGB keyboards did have windows 10 drivers... I tried them, and the hotkeys functioned but the control app didn't work for setting custom colors (it appears to not be backwards compatible with the 8 color keyboards). I read some posts online indicating that the old driver would function after Windows 10 did some updates after "a few" reboots, but that certainly wasn't the case for me, for whatever reason.

So, to be able to set my custom keyboard colors again, I left the newer drivers installed (the ones for windows 10, with the control app that only works with the newer RGB keyboards) and wrote my own little app for setting the colors. The new drivers do appear to provide the "old" 8 color interface, even though the control app bundled with them does not use them. I got a handle on the WMI interface for controlling them from an open source linux driver written in C, without having that as a reference I probably wouldn't have bothered.

I'm going to refine it a bit, and may turn it into a little service that responds to the FN hotkeys relating to the keyboard lights. I do plan on open sourcing it. If there is anyone else here in the same boat, that is interested in using (or building on) this, then let me know and I'll keep this thread up-to-date with progress and will link to the project page when it is available.

-Max

 

Major step in prettying it up - it now shows an image of an NP8275 keyboard with the selected colors changing in real time along with the actual keyboard LEDs. Hard to tell where the boundaries really are on the real keyboard, but this is close enough for me. I'll get rid of the stupid text boxes and make the keyboard image interactive for the color selection. The brightness slider will turn into something better too. Depending on how much, if at all, anyone else cares about this, I may then look at turning this into a background service that responds to the "Fn" hotkeys. I have a feeling, though, that will mean having to take over and handle all of the Fn hotkeys so that Flexikey can be disabled completely. Not sure the two would jive together. That's a lot more work, obviously, so I don't want to do it if nobody needs or wants it. For my own purposes, I have a way to set my custom colors again and that's all I was after in the first place.



EDIT: I should probably go ahead and throw something on there for activating the other modes too (dance, random, etc).

 

Just stumbled on this thread - that's some great work. I've just done the bump to Win10 and ran into the same issue. Would you be interested at all in tossing your code up somewhere? I'd love to take a look/get my hands on it!

 

Joined this board just to tell you that you're doing the lords works. I hate that I can't change the colors on my keyboard. I have chroma everything on my desktop and it makes this laptop look much older than it is.

I have no ability to help, but I'd be happy to pay you for the tool!

 

Update:

I found another thread that said to download the latest windows 8 drivers (It's actually an update from sager!?) and install in compatibility mode.

It worked! I have full function of making the keyboard light up again, for the first time in years. The little program came right up and there's no error message about reinstalling drivers.


Hope that works for you here. I'm using a different model, but looks to be the same issue / hardware

 

I NEED this in my life! Any updates??

 

BUMP.

For the record, I own a Sager NP9170 and after upgrading to Windows 10, the backlit keyboard would sporadically either stop working altogether, or would only light up with the default blue, (which I loath). I used to be able to go back to a previous build, but it would seem that this is no longer an option. Currently, I can turn the backlighting on/off and dim/brighten the keys, but I cannot reach the control panel to change the color - and this is what I am hoping someone has a fix for. I have un-installed the old Hotkey file, and then installed the Chipset and Hotkey (new) from the Sager site, but these did nothing to fix the issue at all. Please lend me your aid!!

 

Did you follow that above advice and install the drivers in compatibility mode?

 

How do you do that exactly, lol?

 

Right click the setup folder and go into properties. Set it to windows 8