Windows 8 screen too dark, can't make it brighter

So let me start by saying that I have checked several things already. I have made sure that the brightness slider is all the way up, I have gone into advanced display settings and turned off any sort of auto dim feature and made sure that all brightness settings are turned all the way up.

I am on an old gateway Vista laptop (dual core cpu, 2GB ram) and I have Windows 8 release preview 32 bit installed on a separate partition on my HDD. When I installed it, everything went fine. Then after running 8 for about 10 minutes, all of a sudden a window popped up above my battery icon in the tray saying that I should replace my battery, and the screen went dim. It was as if I turned the brightness slider all the way down. Well all of the sliders and settings are still at 100% brightness, unplugged or on power.

When I boot back into Vista, everything works fine. There is no battery warning or brightness issues. Any suggestions?

Nothing huh? Well just an update, I reinstalled 8 and it was working fine (still saying I need to change my battery) and brightness was good. Then I did windows updates and restarted and it was back to where is was. Another weird thing is that when the brightness was right, it was stuck on a lower resolution and wouldn't let me change it. Then after updates the resolution went higher but got really dim. The computer thinks it at 100% brightness, but it looks more like 15%.

The other thing is that adjusting the brightness does nothing. It is set to 100% but even if I reduce it, it does nothing. It seems like there is some setting stuck, but I cannot find anything about it.

I had no brightness control after installing Win8 what fixed the problem, was to go to my computers support and download all items and drivers. This solved my problem.

I just installed W8 in my niece's Gateway laptop and having the same problem, usually when you first installed Windows, it uses generic Video driver, just enough to boot into Windows and as clockwatcher said, you need to go to Gateway support Website and download the Video drivers for your Laptop model. The reason Windows 7 did not have this issue because it already had the Video Driver installed.
What you said that it wouldn't let you change to higher resolution, that's because it is a generic Video drive.

I had the same thing too. It would not let me adjust the brightness, but it was bright. I did all windows updates and thats when it went dim. Do you mean windows updates or is this something different?

NVM, just saw topgun's post. I will try that and report back.

alan86 said:

I had the same thing too. It would not let me adjust the brightness, but it was bright. I did all windows updates and thats when it went dim. Do you mean windows updates or is this something different?

NVM, just saw topgun's post. I will try that and report back.

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It's not a Windows update item. it's your computer that needs updating. Go to your computers support/download and get all the needed updates.

clockwatcher474 said:

alan86 said:

I had the same thing too. It would not let me adjust the brightness, but it was bright. I did all windows updates and thats when it went dim. Do you mean windows updates or is this something different?

NVM, just saw topgun's post. I will try that and report back.

Click to expand...

It's not a Windows update item. it's your computer that needs updating. Go to your computers support/download and get all the needed updates.

Click to expand...

Thanks. I am trying that but strangely I cannot find drivers for my model. It's an M-series and when I go to gateway and put in m-series, the next step is the model number. Well the number on the bottom of my laptop is nowhere to be found on the gateway support website. I just wanted to try out windows 8, but it seems to a have a lot of problems (at least the release preview). I am don't want to put in too much work for this because 8 really seems like a tablet friendly os, not for a non-touchscreen laptop. Oh well.

Let me ask you one thing, after installing Windows 8, did you run Windows Update ??? There is a big update, it's about 550MB.
It's strange that you could not find your Model #, did you take a close look on the bottom left or right of the screen, usually they mark it there.

Also, go to Control Panel, click on System then click on Device Manager and look under display adapters, does it show: Generic ????

One more thing you could try. Download a trial version of "Driver Genius", install and run it, I install quite a few Laptop for
friends and family and use it, this software will search for update drivers, download then install automatically for you, I used it for Windows 7 but not for Windows 8, anyway, it does not cost anything to try.

I did do windows update. I think it was a total of 120mb. I even checked again after that and had no new updates.

All my laptop shows is m-series on the screen. I consider myself to be fairly savvy with computers so I am just as baffled that I couldn't find drivers on gateway's website.

Under display adapters it shows generic pnp.

Another place you might want to look at is going into the BIOS to see if the Model of your Gateway in there, I believe for Gateway Laptop, you use F2.

topgundcp said:

Another place you might want to look at is going into the BIOS to see if the Model of your Gateway in there, I believe for Gateway Laptop, you use F2.

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That is good advice as I think Gateway has long ago given up as a real computer company. who ever was building their notebooks and who knows who it was, also is long gone. But if you can find the BIOS it's model and seek help from their web site it may solve the problem.