Brightness keeps adjusting

Hi all -

I just received my brand new NP9150 today. I FINALLY finished getting all of the drivers updated and the OS installed (took far too long), and I'm discovering a REALLY bizarre issue. In the top left corner of the screen, every ~3 seconds, the little notification keeps popping up with the brightness symbol and the screen brightness changes. I have tried adjusting the brightness via the function keys, thinking that might "un-trigger" the process. Nope. I've tried restarting multiple times with no success either.

A few things I've noticed.

1) It's almost macro-like. If the brightness is at 50% and I manually adjust it to 25%, the screen will go from 50% -> 25% during the interval in which the brightness pop-up displays. It will jump back to 50% and adjust down to 25% every time. This also works upwards.

2) It appears as though the issue is gone at initial boot. I have a custom keyboard LED set. The computer boots with the default blue, and right after it adjusts to my custom setup, it starts the weird brightness issue. I get the impression that whatever is initializing at that point is the problem.

Hopefully someone can help me out! I've got Skyrim installing and was REALLY hoping to play tonight!

 

Have you got the brightness setting in the power plan set to dim the display after a short time? That might be the reason.

 

The problem seems to go away when I unplug it. So that may be the issue (something in the power plans). I'll do some checking and play with a few settings. Thanks! I can't believe I didn't think to check there, haha.

 

Turns out, I've changed all the power settings I can think of for when the machine is plugged in, and it still does it. Any other ideas?

 

I havent understood exactly what the problem is.
Can you post a video?
That would help me (and the others on the forum) see the issue more clearly and we may be able to help further.
The resellers will also be able to assist more easily that way.

 

Sure - I'll get a video shortly.

 

OK...

Here's a video of the machine not plugged in


Here's a video of the machine plugged in


You can see the little auto-adjust box popping up every few seconds in the second video.

 

Okay, so the software is acting up.
I think it has issues with the Windows Power Settings.

This is the utility software from the drivers DVD, yes?

Check the Windows Power Settings under advanced options (you know in Control Panel -> Power -> Maximum Performance -> Advanced).
This would be the only possible place for conflicting settings with your power plan in the Clevo ulity software.

 

It is the software, yeah. And no, that's the problem. I made sure that everything is set to NOT dim or auto-adjust in the power settings, yet it still does it.

 

Just to get this out of the way, try uninstalling and reinstalling the Hotkey driver. That's the software which the notification belongs to, and I believe it is also linked to the keyboard backlighting control.

 

No luck. Still does it...

 

What GPU? In AMD there is a PowerPlay option called "varibright". Disable it.

 

It's an Nvidia GTX 675MX. I'm nearly positive it's a Hotkey related issue. Is there known issues between Hotkey and Win7 x64?

 

You're sure this is turned off, right?



I'd try to uninstall Hotkey app and reboot to see if it still happens. It's not really needed in order to use the laptop anyway.

 

Yeah, adaptive brightness has been disabled.

It appears to work when Hotkey is uninstalled. The problem is that the Hotkey drivers display the notification that it's happening. With Hotkey uninstalled, there's no notification that it's happening, so the system may or may not still be auto-adjusting things. The only indication I have that it IS working is that game performance was stuttering at the same pace as the pop-up before. Now, games run smooth.

BUT! I opted into the NP9150 for the backlit keyboard, and without Hotkey installed, I can't adjust the keyboard settings in any way. I think I need to contact XoticPC today. *sigh*