[SOLVED] Power and Side LED Color Change

Community Support
1

Hello!

I have been using the 12th gen 1240p version of the laptop for quite some time now. Something I’ve been eyeing is changing both the color of the power button and side leds. I have windows 11, and while I’ve attempted to utilize the EcTool, I cannot for the life of me figure out how to get it to work. Is there another easier method to do this? Or would the Framework team be interested in adding this as an option in the bios? Thanks!

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Hey @Lucas_Lindfors! I’m the author of the Windows CrosEC driver that ectool uses.

Couple troubleshooting questions first:

  1. What commands are you running, and what output do you get?
  2. Have you installed the CrosEC driver?
    a. This requires you to disable Secure Boot and enable Test Mode, both of which will cause your machine to enter Bitlocker recovery (if you have Bitlocker enabled)

If you’ve not done 2 and are not willing to risk 2.a, it won’t be possible today to accomplish what you want to do from Windows.

The one big caveat here, if you do proceed, is that you can’t permanently change the colors of those LEDs without writing custom software to run on the EC itself. The changes made by ectool are only temporary, and when the EC restarts–about 30 seconds after you power the machine down, for example–they will be reset.

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Ah okay! Well, I’m very poor with scripting and such, so having it reset upon restart would deem a lot of effort for just a color LED change. Thank you for the response though! If I ever try to sit down and figure it out again I’ll be sure to consult this comment :slight_smile:

Best regards!

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And, now I’m wondering too! If you recompiled the firmware and reflashed the EC, you could change these colors fairly easily, right?