How to Fix Screen Brightness Control on a Laptop
If you have an laptop that all of a sudden has stopped giving you backlight control through your function keys (FN) or through the Power Options menu, we have a fix that should bring you screen brightness control again.
Before we get started, make sure that you’ve run Windows Update & checked the manufacturer’s website for the latest drivers for your machine. If you are on Windows 7, 8, or 10, most of your driver updates can be done through Windows Update, but it’s still a good idea to check the manufacturer’s website.
To fix the issue, the first thing you want to do is open up the Device Manager. You can do this by clicking on your start menu, type “Device Manager”, and then open the program.
Go down to and expand the “monitors” section, right click your monitor, and then select “Update Driver Software”.
Select “Browse my computer for drivers software” then choose “Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer”.
You should be given two options; “Generic PnP Monitor” and “Generic PnP Monitor (Standard). You want to select “Generic PnP Monitor” and click “Next”.
After you click next, you should get the screen stating that “Windows has successfully updated your driver software”.
When this is completed, close out of this screen and bring open “Power Options” on your machine to see if the screen brightness control option is there. You can also try your function key (FN) for brightness.
