Windows 7 laptop screen dimming

mrochester · 8 Mar 2009 at 23:21

Hi all,

I've installed Windows 7 on my laptop. On battery power the screen keeps on dimming when I'm using my bluetooth mouse or trackpad. It lights back up again whenever I press a key on the keyboard. How can I stop the screen from dimming when the mouse is being used? I've tried looking through the power profile options but couldn't see anything that would stop this.

Many thanks,

Michael.

Django x2 · 8 Mar 2009 at 23:50

Power Options

Its part of the Windows 7 mobility package whereby it senses idle time and dims the display to save battery.

There must be an option to disable that (or extend it) somewhere in power options

mrochester · 8 Mar 2009 at 23:55

Lucero said:
Power Options

Its part of the Windows 7 mobility package whereby it senses idle time and dims the display to save battery.

There must be an option to disable that (or extend it) somewhere in power options

How can actively using the mouse be considered idle? I've solved it by disabling auto screen brightness in the bios.

mrochester · 9 Mar 2009 at 16:02

Actually I'm still a bit puzzled over this. I've turned off the auto-brightness in the BIOS, and in the power options in Windows 7 I've set 'screen dim' to 'never' for both unplugged and plugged in profile. However, the screen still dims after about 30 seconds of not typing on the keyboard. How the heck do I stop this from happening?! It's driving me insane now! It would certainly be a good enough reason for me to have to reinstall Vista and go back to that.

Please help!

Thanks,

Michael

Daegan · 9 Mar 2009 at 16:14

Submit feedback and hope for a fix. It is a beta OS after all.

Incidentally I had noticed the same, though it's not doing it with my current Windows 7 install and I've always got a Vista install to fall back on - dual booting is easy and hard drive space is cheap.

mrochester · 9 May 2009 at 15:31

I'm bumping this thread because even with the RC this still happens, and it's damned annoying because it essentially makes the laptop unusable when on battery power as the screen keeps on dimming to so dark that it can hardly be read. Does anyone have a fix for this?

Thanks,

Michael.

ChaosDM · 21 Oct 2009 at 23:03

Hi Michael,

quite a while ago since you posted this, but I was wondering if you had found a solution to your problem?

Thanks,
Dimitri

uv · 21 Oct 2009 at 23:23

ChaosDM said:
quite a while ago since you posted this, but I was wondering if you had found a solution to your problem?

Are you having this issue currently? I haven't seen this issue on my laptop since RC1..

..and welcome to the forums

IAmATeaf · 22 Oct 2009 at 09:37

I also get this with my laptops, what's even more annoying is that sometimes when the screen dims it never brightens back up unless I pull the mains from the laptop and plug it back in.

bledd · 22 Oct 2009 at 10:02

probably a BIOS update for your laptop by now.

ChaosDM · 23 Oct 2009 at 22:27

Hi and thanks for the welcome.

I think I found the solution to my problem, who knows it might solve your problem as well.

The problem I had was that when working on battery (not mains) the screen just dimmed whenever it wanted too (that's what it looked like to me anyway) although "dimming" options in the power options had been turned off. It now turns out that there's a "conflict" between the Intel display driver and Windows 7 Power options. All I had to do was go to the display properties and set the "energy saving options" of the display driver "OFF".
I have an Acer Aspire by the way.

Cheers,
Dimitri

ChaosDM · 24 Oct 2009 at 14:47

Problem isn't completely solved. As soon as I turn off the computer all "settings" are lost. So I have to set them "right" each time I switch on the computer. I'm looking to find a final solution for this, but doesn't seem to be simple.

Dimitri