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I have a new Dell Latitude Laptop which seems to be randomly dimming the display depending on the apps I open...

It brightens when excel is opened and dims when it closes, as if to be adjusting or calibrating the brightness automatically. this is the case with a couple of programs

what I want to know:

Is this normal or is there a problem with my driver, I reinstalled it with Windows 8.1 and used the driver disk to recover all the drivers, it then installed an additional driver for Nvidia later on.

How do I stop the display from behaving like this? I am conscious of the power this will drain from the machines battery when running off the battery itself.

what I have done:

I have adjusted the power management settings in the control panel so that it wont dim the display for 5 minutes. (the display changes without letting 5 minutes elapse)

I have tried looking for the Dell Power Management tool quoted on a forum I found but this does not seem to be installed so I can not disable it that way.

the only tool I have found that causes this activity on the web is Automatic brightness but this is not set up and I can not find it in the settings.

2 Answers 2

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There are two potential solutions to this, depending on what is actually causing the problem.

The first solution is to disable the ambient light sensor (ALS) in case your system has one, this can be done in the control panel, but it's faster to just type "sensor" in the start menu's search bar and it should bring up the corresponding control panel in the results; then just uncheck the "Light sensor" and apply.

Control panel screenshot

The second solution is to disable Intel's bullshit power-saving function (annoying and utterly useless) : right-click on your desktop and click on "Graphic properties", this will bring up Intel driver's control panel. In the Power tab, click "Power features" (or similar), then on the left select "On battery" and finally uncheck the only option that's listed, something along the lines of "Screen power saving technology".

Intel control panel screenshot


The screenshots are in French but the item's locations are the same so you shouldn't have too much trouble finding your way.

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This may not be helpful to many users as there could have been a various different things that could have caused this as the previous answer suggests, in my case there was a problem with my drivers. I contacted Dell for support (which arguably I should have done in the first place), and they gave me the correct drivers for my machine.

Bottom line in my opinion was that the machine was not properly set up by the manufacturer. (It was supposed to be pre installed with windows 8.1 but came to me with windows 7.) and when I upgraded to 8.1 the drivers were not compatible.

So a quick install of new video and chipset drivers sorted out the flickering/ dimming.

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