G74SX Backlit KB Question

[Signal2Noise]

I've had my laptop for almost a month now and despite a few hiccups here and there it has been performing well. I'm just curious about one thing with the laptop:

The keyboard lights up @ boot but then goes off until Windows actually launches. Is this normal? Other lit keyboards I've used stay lit the minute power is turned on.

On a side yet related note, I find typing on the KB at a moderate pace tends to miss keystrokes quite a bit. Not a big deal for gaming but an annoyance for typing tasks.

[dstrakele]

The backlight behavior you describe is normal for the G74SX. It flashes once while booting and remains off until logon after Windows loads unless it has been turned off with Fn-F3. In that case, you need to use Fn-F4 to turn the backlights on.

Here is what I have done to eliminate keyboard lag and missed keystrokes: http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?3076-G74SX-Keyboard-Issues-ATK-1.0.00010-BIOS-202-Available...

[Signal2Noise]

Wow! Thanks for the quick reply, dstrakele. Just as I thought for the KB light.

Your linked thread's last tip will be what I try as I have satisfied all the other suggestions already, except #3 since I swapped the Atheros out in favor of the Intel wi-fi.

[380mcn]

it is because the backlight keyboard is controlled by Windows. Scumbag ASUS made a windows only software to light the keyboard, instead of embedding it on the bios.
if you use linux you won't get the keyboard backlight!

[MomentaryLapseO]

380mcn wrote:
it is because the backlight keyboard is controlled by Windows. Scumbag ASUS made a windows only software to light the keyboard, instead of embedding it on the bios.
if you use linux you won't get the keyboard backlight!

If you read the first post, he is using Windows.

You will need the ATKACPI driver and hotkey-related utilities which can be downloaded here under utilities:
http://support.asus.com/download.aspx?SLanguage=en&p=3&s=336&m=G74Sx&os=30&hashedid=LUFmeP8fwFruEdH7

[BrodyBoy]

380mcn wrote:
it is because the backlight keyboard is controlled by Windows. Scumbag ASUS made a windows only software to light the keyboard, instead of embedding it on the bios.
if you use linux you won't get the keyboard backlight!

That doesn't really make sense to me....maybe I'm missing something. How could you control the backlight during use through a BIOS control?

Seems like the backlight could only be like other devices....webcam, WLAN, USB, etc etc.....you can enable/disable in the BIOS, but it's only within the operating system that you'd have finer controls over how you want to use the devices. How would you change a BIOS setting on-the-fly from within an OS?

So yeah, there is a Windows ATK driver, and no Linux driver. This is annoying for Linux users, but they're probably used to this kind of hit & miss support. The vast majority of PCs are designed specifically as Windows-based computers. When someone chooses to re-task them for an alternate OS, kind of like when someone uses Windows on an Apple machine, I think you have to expect these kinds of compromises.

I guess I don't see how that makes Asus a scumbag any more than Apple is a scumbag for not putting a Windows button on their keybaords.

[fostert]

380mcn wrote:
it is because the backlight keyboard is controlled by Windows. Scumbag ASUS made a windows only software to light the keyboard, instead of embedding it on the bios.
if you use linux you won't get the keyboard backlight!

The newer kernels (>=3.0) have special ASUS notebook device drivers in them as options you can flag to be compiled with the kernel either as modules that can be inserted later or compiled into the actual runtime kernel image. I think they are to activate some common ASUS key combos to do things like turn on/off the KB backlight. But I haven't experimented with these yet: my stock 3.0.01 kernel is more than good enough right now and I don't really miss the KB backlight.