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6 Posts
1
12439
Precision 7520 Backlit Keyboard Does Not Light Up
Just purchased a Precision Workstation 7520 from the Dell Outlet. To my surprise, it came without a backlit keyboard. Who would spend so much money on a premium laptop and not throw in a few more bucks for a backlit keyboard? It really makes a big difference!
Anyway, I purchased a replacement backlit keyboard (383D7) and installed it. The keyboard works fine, even the little light on Caps Lock key turns on when pressed. But the backlighting does not work.
I tried the obvious fixes like double-checking that I connected the keyboard ribbon correctly. And I also ensured that the contacts on the ribbon are clean.
According to the manual, there is supposed to be a Keyboard Illumination entry in the Bios that I can toggle on/off. However, this entry does not appear in my Bios, which is the latest version 1.6.0. I even upgraded the Bios (to the same version) just in case the upgrade process might detect the backlit keyboard and make the entry available, but no luck.
I suspect this might be a bug in the Bios. This type of hardware control is purely a Bios function and has little to do with Windows.
To help me diagnose this, can anyone with a Precision 7510 or 7520 please tell me if you have a backlit keyboard that is actually lighting up? If yes, which version of the Bios are you running?
Thanks in advance!
PCbluesky
6 Posts
1
September 9th, 2017 14:00
Thanks for reply, @thebilldolan. Your testimonial eliminates the bios as the culprit.
I researched further and noticed that when I updated the patches/drivers from the Dell update site for my Service Tag, the same update keeps reappearing. It's the Intel Engine Management Components Installer.
So rather than process the download/update using Dell's website, I manually downloaded this file and executed it directly. The first time it ran it failed. So I rebooted and ran it again. The second time it worked. Then I rebooted and waited about 25 minutes for the boot process to complete while the screen displayed "Preparing to Configure Windows ... Do Not Turn Off Your Computer."
When it finally booted, the keyboard was lighted! I checked the bios and the Keyboard Illumination settings now appear! The [Fn] F10 keys now work to control the backlighting. Oh, what a joy!
A few notes for posterity:
- This particular update for the Intel Engine Management Components Installer continues to appear when checking for updates on the Dell website. Apparently, this is a common problem. See this thread:
en.community.dell.com/.../20008176
- When the update is run from the Dell website, no messages are displayed to indicate that the update failed. So the first time I ran it, I just assumed it worked. Only when I checked for additional updates and noticed the same file reappearing did I become suspicious. That's when I manually download the file and ran it directly with multiple reboots as described above.
- In older Dell laptops, the backlit keyboard controls are in the Dell extensions to the Windows Mobility Center. Apparently, for the Precision 7520 they moved them to the bios.
Hope this helps someone else.
thebilldolan
12 Posts
0
September 9th, 2017 11:00
This works just fine on mine. (as well as the machine until all the recent BDOS errors) but I do have the backlit keyboard options in my bios. I am also using the 1.6.0 bios from the site. This sounds like there is some other progamming that tells the system what it has that is not user controllable.
spanky762
8 Posts
0
October 22nd, 2017 05:00
Thank you so much for posting this. I also purchased a 7520 from the outlet, and it also does not have the backlit keyboard. I will be following your path and ordering / installing a backlit keyboard myself.