LCD Brightness won't change

Hello, I'm new to the forum and hoping for a bit of assistance.

I have a Dell Inspiron 600m experiencing a bit of LCD trouble. The brightness setting is permanently stuck at it's current setting (relatively dim and frustrating). Using either the fn + up/down arrow or the BIOS, the brightness will not adjust. I have updated the BIOS to newest version, updated the Video driver to newest version, uninstalled/reinstalled Dell Quickset to no avail. When I use the fn + up/down arrow in Windows, the GUI displays that the brightness is adjusting, but it still doesn't change.

Additionally, the issue appears to be intermittent. It will be stuck in it's dimmest setting for a couple weeks, then magically decide all is well and work normally (brightness adjustable) for a couple weeks, then decide it hates me and go dim again, etc. I have called Dell, and they replaced the motherboard and the LCD screen with cable - still no change.

Any advice?

Solved: LCD panel replaced.

 

Does anybody have any ideas?

 

Have you checked your power settings? Also, what operating system do you use?

 

Yep, I've checked power settings. I'm running Windows XP Pro SP2, all current updates.

 

How long have you had the laptop? Have you ever done a clean install of XP? Have you reset your BIOS to default settings?

 

Laptop is two years old. I did a fresh install last August. Yes, I have reset BIOS to default settings.

 

Try reinstalling dell's quickset software from their website.

 

Thanks for the idea. The software is part of the OS installation, so it's already installed, and I did a uninstall and reinstall of the most current version. PC still thinks it is turning up the brightness, but it isn't.

 

My Vostro started doing this same thing. However, the brightness control is restored when I reboot.

The only time that it is disabled is when it is coming out of Sleep mode. On a restart or out of Hibernation, it works fine.

I think that this is related to Quickset hotkey controls. I just have not resolved it, yet.

 

Unfortunately, mine doesn't restore on reboot.

One issue that is sort of interesting is before the motherboard and panel were replaced, the issue was intermittent - work for a while, then don't work. In the phase when it didn't work, the screen was at it's dimmest setting.

After the replacement, the brightness control is permanently fixed somewhere between dimmest and brightest, but it control has yet to be restored, meaning the intermittancy of the problem is now gone.

Not sure if the extra info helps, but I'm sure it can't hurt. Any other ideas?

 

I have reinstalled the Bios, Quickset, video drivers, ACP drivers and I still have not figured it out.

I even went into the registry to see if I could affect it, but it is still a mystery. Mine is not as much of a problem as yours. At least mine stays on the level that I had it at when I put it into Sleep and I can restore functionality by rebooting.

 

no joke. Have you reinstalled the OS since you've had the issue. I'm considering it, but it's such a pain!

 

If your laptop is still under warranty, just keep complaining to Dell until the problem is fixed. It sounds like there's a hardware problem.

 

That's exactly the issue I'm having. It sure sounds like a hardware problem, but all they want me to do is reinstall the OS, which I simply can't do right now.

 

Yeah, that happend to my 1530 before as well.
Check your power settings to make sure that you are on "High Performance" mode. Last time I sat the thing on "Power Saver" mode, in which the LCD automatically dims no matter what. Changing to High Performance should solve the problem.

If it doesn't, click on the battery meter in your notification area, select "More power options", and under "High Performance" mode, select Change Plan settings, then "Change advanced power settings". In the new window opened, click on the X besides "Display" to collapse the menu. Make sure that your "Display Brightness" is at 100% for both options, turn off "Adaptive Display", and if that doesn't help, try disable "SmartDIMMER" to see if that will fix your problem.

PS> Your LCD being not totally black is an indication that your backlight is working fine...so it is not so much of a hardware failure as opposed to software conflict/malfunction. Contacting Dell for hardware replacement is less likely going to solve your problem than to have the "technicians" leave stray marks over your lappy....try to fix it if you can, if not, well....then just hope that the techs at dell treat your lappy well....hehe...

DIY=Power to the People

 

I don't have "high performance" but I do have an option "maximum performance." Chose that made sure brightness setting was at max. Didn't help. Can't find any smartdimmer or adaptive display on this PC. Yours is a bit newer so you might have some extra settings. Any other ideas?

I agree with you about the Dell techs. I ALWAYS stay in the room and make sure they are good to my stuff.

 

I have set the Bios to max brightness and set the Control Panel to max brightness and the power setting is High Performance. I should be able to use the Fn key to adjust, but it does not.

I received the following info from a Dell Tech:

Based on the information you have provided,I don't know if you're encountering problem like this.However,let me compare to you what Sleep/Standby mode versus Hibernation in a more elaborate manner.Standby/Sleep is a low power mode, with most things shut down and just a trickle of power to maintain RAM memory and check the keyboard (pressing a key brings it out of standby) while Hibernate is a "no power" mode, where the OS saves the content of the RAM memory to a special file on the hard drive, then shuts down completely. Upon startup, the Operating System recognizes the special file and copies the contents back into RAM memory without having to go through the full startup proceedure.Therefore,brightness control seems won't respond after coming out of sleep mode even if you will press the Fn+up and Fn+down arrows right there and then since the operation is gradual unlike for hibernation mode.

With this,the operation is normal and your system is fully functional both hardware and software wise.


He tells me that this is normal. I disagreed with his assessment since it did not act in this manner 2 weeks ago.

It does not explain your problem with the brightness control, either.

 

I agree. You should definitely should not be experiencing that issue. I have an Inspriron 5100 (4.5 years old and still going strong) that definitely does not experience this issue. It goes into hibernation, comes out with everything fully functional, including brightness. It used to have issues coming out of hibernation with deactivating the USB ports. I had to go into control panel, add hardware and walk through the steps for it to look for everything that was plug-and-play. Although the install wizard found nothing to install, it activated my ports.

Won't fix me up, but I wonder if that might be a work around for your issue?

 

Latest update

At the initial diagnosis of the problem, I ran the Dell diagnostics utility and came up with everything passing. Then we went through the replace motherboard, then the LCD screen and still the issue isn't fixed.

It hadn't occured to me to run diagnostics since the hardware had been replaced and should have been good. I was experiencing a separate issue tonight and ran diagnostics and the LCD inverter detection test failed with code 1000-0322 "error accessing the LCD inverter." So, Dell has now dispatched another new LCD panel (and motherboard just to be sure I guess). We'll see how it goes. I'll post the result after the replacement.

 

I finally fixed mine. I uninstalled Quickset and wiped all traces from the registry. Then, I re-installed a previous version of Quickset and everything works now.

So, the tech was full of something! Big surprise.

I hope that you get yours fixed. It is frustrating when something does not work properly.

 

Tech came today and swapped the LCD and Voila! the brightness works. Go figure it was a hardware issue after all, not the OS. It's just like Dell to recommend reinstalling the OS as a fix-all. As a side note, the new panel (second one to be shipped so far) is washed out in the bottom center of the screen, so they are shipping LCD #3 tomorrow.

Jakpro, glad you got yours squared away.