Thinkpads Forum

I support about 20 Thinkpads, mainly T61's but also a few R60's. On a few, every time I power the laptop up, it is at the lowest brightness setting (not just 'not full brightness'; definitely as dim as it can be). I have to use Fn+Home repeatedly to brighten the display. I've updated bios, software, etc but nothing seems to cure this problem. This happens on both battery and wall power. For the few laptops that it applies to, it happens all the time.

I've noticed that, on at least one T61, the brightness drops to lowest setting on a power change event - plugging OR unplugging the power cord, or if the screen blanks when on battery power.

Any ideas? I searched for 'dim display' etc, but didn't get any hits.

Thanks!

You may want to go into BIOS, and set the display brightness on "high", then adjust it manually when running on battery, or create an appropriate setting in the Power Manager.

Look in thinkvantage/powermanager, under global power settings/> dynamic brightness control. See if that has a setting that is wrong.

In addition to ajkula66's advice, I'd guess that in those notebooks which cause problems, an inappropriate power plan has been selected in ThinkVantage Power Manager. These power plans include screen brightness. If none of the predefined power plans meets your needs, you can create a user defined power plan. I had to do that in order to get screen brightness the way i wanted it at start-up.

In recent versions of the ThinkVantage Power Manager, there is also an option, whose English translation might be "Adjustable Display" and which doesn't seem to be documented in the Power Manager Help system.

In the ThinkVantage Power Manager, you'll also find settings for Dynamic Brightness Control, check these settings.