# Monitor Brightness Problem



## ukbsktbll (Oct 9, 2003)

My dad has a Dell laptop, and recently the monitor seems to be very dim. It also doesn't change at all when you pluggedit up. I checked some power settings and the graphics card under device manager and everything looked fine. Any help would be great.


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## TheMatt (May 9, 2006)

Hi, :wave:

What is the model? I believe you hold the *Fn* key and press the *↑* (*Up Arrow*) key to increase the brightness on most Dells, but I will check.


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## Done_Fishin (Oct 10, 2006)

Also try to see whether it looks the same on an external monitor .. could be the inverters or backlighting circuits are failing


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## Dell_CA (Mar 27, 2007)

ukbsktbll said:


> My dad has a Dell laptop, and recently the monitor seems to be very dim. It also doesn't change at all when you pluggedit up. I checked some power settings and the graphics card under device manager and everything looked fine. Any help would be great.


Hello,

My name is Mike, I’m a Technical Analyst located at Dell corporate headquarters in Round Rock, TX. I’m part of an internet outreach team developed to interact with the online community regarding technical questions and issues that customers face with Dell products. I’ve read your question and wanted to chime in with some help. 

First, The Matt is correct, holding the Fn button and tapping the up or down arrow keys will increase or lower the brightness on the display. There should also be a setting in bios that controls the brightness on AC and on battery power. You can also find these settings in the Dell Quickset configuration utility if you have it installed. 

If you can’t change the brightness with any of these options then it would probably be due to a failing inverter or LCD backlight. Usually when either of these components fail they do so quickly and the results are usually more severe then just a dimmed screen. 

Depending on the model of notebook there are built in LCD tests that you can run by holding down the mute button and then pressing the power button when the system is off. If your father's system doesn’t have this option you can try running the 32-bit diagnostics available on the hard drive of the machine. Just restart the computer and tap on the F12 key. You should see an option for Dell diagnostics, if not you can run them from the blue resource CD shipped with the system or you can download them at www.support.dell.com. Just click on the “Drivers and Downloads” link and enter the information specific to your system. Then locate the Dell 32-Bit Diagnostics and follow the instructions. I hope this information is helpful.

Thank you,

Mike 
Dell customer advocate


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