# Screen Brightness

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/screen-brightness/762646>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [August 13, 2016, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/screen-brightness/762646 "2016-08-13T02:11:27Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Spud](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spud/32/347_2.png) [@Spud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spud)\
**Post date:** [August 13, 2016, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/screen-brightness/762646/1 "2016-08-13T02:11:27Z")

</div>

I have a Lenovo Ideapad, and it has been fine for the past few years. Tonight for some reason I decided the display was a bit too bright so I turned it down using the f11 key. At first it did nothing so I hit it a few more times. Suddenly it turned down to about 25% sy best. I hit f12 to turn it back up a bit… nothing. I went into settings and it says it is 100%. It is still almost too dark to see. I even did a hard re-boot… still dark.

Any suggestions?

I apologize for any typos since I can barely see my screen.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Spud](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spud/32/347_2.png) [@Spud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spud)\
**Post date:** [August 13, 2016, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/screen-brightness/762646/2 "2016-08-13T19:25:24Z")

</div>

One bump

Seriously none of the computer geeks here has any idea if there is something simple I’m missing that could save me a trip to tech support and/or dumping a grand on a new laptop?

I’m posting this from my work laptop because I can actually see this screen.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\
**Post date:** [August 13, 2016, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/screen-brightness/762646/3 "2016-08-13T19:53:55Z")

</div>

Looks like it’s probably a display driver issue of some sort. More info and several troubleshooting methods here:

> **[Page Not Found - Lenovo Support US](https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/pagenotfound?item=http%3A%2F%2Fsupport.lenovo.com%2Fus%2Fen%2Fsolutions%2Fht079345)**
>
> Lenovo Global Support Home

Same basic idea (display driver borked) with additional info here:  
[https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Lenovo-P-Y-and-Z-series/Z500-brightness-problems-Windows-8-1/td-p/1271175](https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Lenovo-P-Y-and-Z-series/Z500-brightness-problems-Windows-8-1/td-p/1271175)