Inspiron 6400 screen dimming

[stevo1210]

I have a Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop which as an issue with the display dimming down to a lower brightness level when Windows loads. It is running WIndows Vista and I just reinstalled it 2 weeks ago. A few days ago, the screen kept playing up in terms of brightness. The screen is very bright and nice during POST, Windows bootup screen and welcome screen. After the welcome screen loads, it just dims down to a lower level (like minimum brightness). But I checked the software (Dell Quickset) that controls the screen brightness and battery etc., it reports the screen on full brightness. I can dim the screen down and it gets dimmer than what it is now.
I don't know where to start looking for the problem. I suspect it is software and not hardware because I think that if it was ahrdware it would be dim from the beginning. Maybe the ATi Catalyst control center has something to with this as well? The graphics card on this laptop is an ATi X1400 256MB.

Thanks.

[Scenic]

Re: Inspiron 6400 screen dimming

brightness in the ATI driver lowered for some reason?
or with those hardware keys?! (Fn Key + some other)

[stevo1210]

Re: Inspiron 6400 screen dimming

I tried the Fn keys with no success. I will look at the ATi drivers tomorrow.

Thanks

[zandrax]

Re: Inspiron 6400 screen dimming

Get the new 8.6 catalysts for Vista and mod them with Mobility Modder: my brother had a similar issue [OpenGL games (he used to play Call of Duty) turned backlight at minimum level on its then new notebook with Vista and an Ati 2600] partly solved by updating the old drivers with the modded new.
He cured completely all problems by ditching Vista for XP

Zandrax

[stevo1210]

Re: Inspiron 6400 screen dimming

I unistalled the ATi Drivers today and now the X1400 is running off the Windows Vista original "XDDM" driver for the ATi X1400, so far the screen dimming issue has gone away. Looks like I've found my problem.... also looks like I need to find some suitable drivers.

Thanks.

[zandrax]

Re: Inspiron 6400 screen dimming

Don't worry: I suspect Dell's support site host so old drivers you can't expect anything better than your old ones.
Graphic drivers for desktop cards cover even mobile chips, but they lack mobile PCI IDs: in short, they don't recognize the chip and fail to install. For Ati drivers there is a workaround: a program called Mobility Modder simply adds these IDs into Ati .inf files. Next time you run the driver installer it will find your chip: when Windows warns you it's not a signed so you may get robbed at the flea market, your car burns down and drivers may be unstable if you agree [troubles come in this exact order ], then just face the risk (well, only .inf files are changed so the drivers are as stable as before the modding) and press Ok. Drivers got installed and, after rebooting, you'll enjoy your Inspiron.
In short get the new Catalysts, download Mobility modder, uncompress the Catalyst suite into a folder and, if you haven't done it before, disable UAC (after disabling UAC, you have to reboot). Then run Mobility modder, select the folder you stored Ati drivers and start modding.
Then run drivers' setup, follow instructions and reboot.
Lastly enjoy your computer

Zandrax

[Junk Parts]

Re: Inspiron 6400 screen dimming

I guess I had it easy Mate. My laptop is and Latitude C640. I bought it for $40. The problem was that it had a bios, and hard drive password still installed. I called Dell and they had me do a change of ownership form. Next they gave me the backdoor passwords to go in and turn off the $#@@& passwords. It only took out one of the passwords but I could boot and use it after that. One day just for giggles I did a bios update on it. I then went to the bios screen and was able to disable the second password. Now what did I learn? I learned that if your Dell is "Hot" Dell would help you steal it! Mine isn't stolen. A Friend of mine bought it from her school, and this is the way it came. Now as for drivers, my brother downloaded everything that Dell listed for this unit. Before I used his "driver" disk all I had was 16 colors on the ATI mobility card, and it would not take any of the ATI drivers that I had here. Now with all the Dell drivers onboard it works just fine. The modem still sucks! The orginal was blown so I stuck one in it from a Toshiba laptop. It says its a 56k what ever. I don't remeber the exact maker of this modem but it from France made for the US market. My desktop hooks in the mid 40k range. I can plug in this laptop to that line and all I can get is 21k something. I think its time for a new modem!