windows - Brightness too dark or too bright

08
2014-07
  • YatharthROCK

    Basically, below a seemingly-arbitrary threshold (seems to be around 60%) my laptop screen is too dark to really make out much, and above that threshold it takes its maximum brightness (which is waay too bright for my eyes).

    This problem only occurs when I change the brightness using Windows' UI. Changing the brightness using Fn keys on my keyboard works as expected; unless the screen went into dark mode because of Windows, in which case they have no effect.

    This problem started occuring on my ASUS laptop very recently. My laptop has a poor battery, but I don't think that's related.

    What is going on? I tried resetting power plan settings, turning off adaptive brightness and restarting. I'll give any info asked for. Help required urgently...

    Update: here's another issue (thankfully, resolved for the moment) related to my screen too: Laptop screen turns off on removing power cord.

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    Related Question

    How to control brightness on Sony VGN SZ-series laptop after Windows 7 upgrade?
  • Clare Macrae

    I liked Windows 7 so much on my desktop machine that I took a chance and upgraded my Sony VGN-SZ2XP laptop as well - to Windows 7 Home Premium - knowing that Sony were not making Windows 7 drivers available for their old XP machines.

    As long as I keep the Stamina/Speed switch on Stamina, I get a good display, and the machine is way faster than in its XP incarnation.

    But one major niggle is that Windows Mobility Center does not have a "Display Brightness" panel. Its help says "If a setting doesn't appear, it might be because the required hardware, such as a wireless network adapter, or driver is missing or turned off."

    So I am now looking for any way to control the screen brightness, in Windows 7, on a VGN SZ-series laptop, please...

    (I figure that once I have found a way to control the brightness, I can tie it to Fn keys using the excellent AutoHotKey.)


    • Related Answers
  • Clare Macrae

    I have found a solution to allow brightness to be changed using Fn+F5 and Fn+F6!

    As instructed here, I downloaded from Sony and installed the following, in this order, rebooting after each step:

    1. VAIO Event Service
    2. Sony Utils DLL
    3. Sony Shared Library

    After this, the Fn key worked fine - I've tested it with F2 (mute), F3 & F4 (volume), F5 & F6 (brightness) and F12 (hibernate). This makes a tremendous difference to the usability of this machine on Windows 7.

    Huge thanks to harrymc for the correct download location on the Sony website, which I had failed to find.

    By the way, Brightness still doesn't appear in "Windows Mobility Center" - but that doesn't matter now.

  • harrymc

    AFAIK, Vista is supported on your model, so you can use its video driver.

    I believe that the Vista driver download is here, from which you should download the nVidia Video Driver.

  • 8088

    Just found this article, that shows how brightness can be controlled by the keyboard by tweaking in the BIOS the "Brightness Mode Control" to "User Control":

    image1

    Another remark from the article is:

    The Brightness slider for me is in the ‘Change plan settings’, underneath the drop downs.

    Hope that helps!

  • James

    There is a brightness option in power settings in the control panel. You can adjust the brightness there. I am not sure how would you connect it to Fn key though.

  • Arash

    I had the same problem and i did all work Clare Macrae said but it did not solve.

    Then i updated windows 7(just which were related to .Net Framework) and it solved.