Vaio Z12 brightness issue

Last night I reinstalled the video drivers of my Z12 and today @ work while the machine is unplugged (i haven't tried it plugged in yet) My brightness doesn't stay @ max even when its set there. When I switch between balanced and high performance the brightness goes to max just for a second (both plans have brightness @ max default even on battery so I can adjust it as I see fit) then it dims down again. I turned automatic brightness OFF in the vaio control pannel and its stayed off. no clue what / why its doing this.

EDIT: It seems to dim more when I'm viewing the desktop and seems to brighten when in an application. I honestly have no clue whats going on, but I can definitely see it dim while on the desktop.

 

Okay, i got an idea! Are you on stamina mode? If yes, go to the graphics property for the intel card, then uhh turn off intel power saving technology... (i'd give u the path... but for some reason i cant find it ><)

edit: Nvm, here it is, go to Graphics Property >> Power >> Power Features

Then change the "Graphics Power Plan Settings" to "On Battery" in the drop down menu, then uncheck Display Power Saving Technology

 

It seems to be doing it in both speed and stamina modes. Power saving technology is off.

Its so damn weird! When I go into my browser, the entire screen gets brighter (including the start menu that I've kept pulling up for testing purposes) but when I minimize it, it goes to . I was on speed for a bit and it was fine, then I switched back to stamina and it went dark, then I switched BACK to speed and it stayed dark. Again, I reinstalled the video drivers yesterday because I tried to install the newest one from nvidia and it didn't work, so I reinstalled. Should I do another clean install of the video drivers? Whats the best way to go about doing that?

EDIT: Given that the brightness changes contingent upon my application, it must be software related (fixable) instead of hardware related (will make me want to kill myself because it seems like the vaio Z was pulled off newegg where I have a 2 year accidental damage warranty)

 

I think this is just the Sony ''automatic brightness sensor'' feature. You can turn that off in vaio control panel -> display -> automatic brightness (or something like that).

 

It is off.

Before I reinstalled my video drivers, if I had google chrome open and I plugged in or unplugged in my machine, it would give me a message asking me to close the browser before it would automatically switch to speed or stamina. NOW when I toggle between plugged / unplugged, it just switches automatically without that prompt. why do you think that is?

 

Or you excluded the program (you can block/unblock programs that stop switching), or chrome isn't using the GPU, so it can switch without shutting chrome down.

 

I figured it out. The Z asks me to close chrome when I'm watching hulu or something. I think I fixed the brightness issues. I did a hard reset of the video drivers. I went into safemode, uninstalled the video drivers (intel + nvidia), went into gpedit.msc and made it so that windows wouldn't automatically install drivers upon reboot, rebooted, ran driver sweeper to clean out the old drivers entirely, rebooted, waited until windows attempted and got denied installing default drivers (by the rule I enabled in gpedit.msc), reset the rule within gpedit so that I could install drivers, ran the setup that I downloaded from sony support, rebooted.

Viola! As far as I can tell (fingers crossed) it fixed al the issues that I caused when I tried to uninstall current drivers and reinstall newest nvidia driver only to be smacked down with a "hardware not compatible" message.

 

Wait... so you tried to install the newest drivers from Nvidia's site?

 

Yea, bad idea!

 

Mhmm as i pointed out on the other thread, you must mod them first although i'm suprised it ran your screen at native resolution right? I thought it'd just not run at all