Hi,
I managed to get the keyboard lights switched ON (permanently), by unchecking the energy saving feature of the HID (USB) entries of the keyboard in the device manager. As far as I remember, I unchecked all energy saving features in all USB/HID entries (hoping to not screw up the system) ... and magically, it worked.
So now I can switch on/off the keyboard backlight, but not set any timeout.
Maybe this works for you, too!
-FN
