3-4 days ago by godson sent me a message that his Corsair keyboard, the fancy K95 RGB, isn’t working the way it was supposed to work. (scroll to the bottom if you only want the solution and not the waffle)
When I asked him what he meant, he responded that the key lights are lighting up, but the keyboard itself isn’t typing or the keys aren’t working. I figured it was either a firmware update that went wrong or the unit has a mechanical fault and has to go back to the supplier.
Unfortunately for my godson, they warranty expired (when he got it, he paid 3k ZAR for it) and to top it off the suppliers are closed until the end of the current COVID19 21-days lockdown.
He tried different USB ports on his gaming rig as well as his sister’s studio PC. Nudda. The big bubkiss. I got the unit collected from him last night and brought it with me to work this morning to see if I could flash the firmware, do some more testing and see what I could find wrong (if any). Low and behold, the unit wouldn’t detect as a USB device on Linux nor Windows.
It was just as he said, all the back-lights switch on but zero communication between keys and board. The odd thing was that it was running through all the various patterns that the RGB lighting could perform and that had me thinking, could this be some weird DEMO mode for the keyboard?
I opened up the manual that I downloaded from the Corsair.com website and low and behold, as per the documentation, the keyboard activates a “DEMO mode” when the device receives power but no USB enumeration. Solution? Well, well, well:
To deactivate the DEMO mode of the Corsair K95 (and most others in the range):
1) Plug the device out
2) Hold the ESC key down while plugging the device back in
3) Win
It’s that easy! If you get stuck, drop a comment or send me a mail.