Brightness not changing

Question

I typically use my laptop docked, but every now and then I have to use it on its own for stuff. my screen brightness will not change, whether using function keys or adjusting in settings. the bar goes up and down, but the brightness stays the same. I have looked into settings and there is no adaptive brightness settings to adjust, my power settings don't change it, and all my drivers are up to date. searching the forums, the most common answer is to roll back my driver, but that didn't work either. I think because I dock it, there's no telling which update may have caused the issue. It might have been going on for a long time, I just never notice it. Any advice?

Answer 1

Hello，Jughead12700

Thank you for posting in the Microsoft community.

What is the brand model number of your laptop?

I understand the issue of your laptop screen brightness not following the adjustment, there are two possible factors that can cause this issue.

1. Some keys in the registry may be corrupted, which can also cause the brightness adjustment to fail.
2. your laptop brand and its own management software may affect the brightness adjustment function, some brands of laptops may have specific settings in terms of drivers and software.

So I would like to start by asking you to perform the following steps which will fix the corruption in the registry

1. Press the keyboard “Win logo key + R” to open the run
2. In which type “regedit” enter OK to open the registry
3. Copy the following content into the path above Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}
4. Click the “0000” folder on the left, double-click to open “FeatureTestControl”.
5. Change the value data to “ffff”, click “OK”, and then restart the computer to observe the situation!

Disclaimer: Generally, modifying registry subkeys or work group is intended for advanced users, administrators, and IT Professionals. It can help fix some problems, however, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For further protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to back up and restore the registry, click How to back up and restore the registry in Windows - Microsoft Support to view the article.

If the problem persists, you may need to contact your laptop's official website technical support for targeted hardware testing or seek support and assistance from the relevant management software.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions you may have that we can assist you with. Thank you for your understanding and cooperation!

Best Regards，

Rota|Microsoft Community Support Specialist

Answer 2

I have an Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 GU603

Processor 13th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-13620H 2.40 GHz

Following your steps above, in the "0000" folder, I only have "FeatureControl", not "Featuretestcontrol". is that the same thing?

Answer 3

Just wanted to share that after a recent update I am also experiencing the same issue. I have an HP ZBook 15 G6 and my display driver is NVIDIA Quadro RTX 3000. In addition to the obvious suggestions (disabling adaptive brightness, playing around with power settings, going through NVIDIA Control Settings, restarting in safe mode to ensure the screen is capable of running at full brightness, etc) I tried uninstalling the latest Windows update I received but that didn't help. I tried deleting the display driver, restarting windows and while it's still running "Microsoft basic display adapter" the brightness cannot be controlled but my screen is at 100% brightness and things look good. Then once the NVIDIA Quadro RTX 3000 driver is automatically installed by windows, my brightness automatically goes down to really dim levels and no matter if it's at 0% or 100% it stays dim and doesn't change (or if it changes between 0% and 100%, it's by a tiny level).

I tried the regedit fix below but my registry doesn't even have a FeatureTestControl key.

Please advise if you have any other suggestions.

Honestly speaking I'm on the verge of buying a new laptop as this will screw up my eyes by the time a fix gets pushed. Please kindly forward this problem to an engineering team as this bug has rendered my laptop (and I imagine others too) nearly useless.