Bootcamp 3.2 Windows 7 Brightness

Repair didn't change anything for me. Brightness controls are still non-functional.

Maybe it's because I'm running x64... Repaired 3x so far, and still have the same issue.

I think I'll just install Catalyst Control Panel from ATI and use its brightness controls instead. 😟

I am also running Windows 7 64 bit and it worked after I restarted it repairing it once. You could probably go and check the brightness is set to the lowest in Mac. I hoping it would stay the same when I go home and restart it this evening.

jokejong wrote:

Guys, you need to install the bootcamp assistant in Windows 7 for the brightness and keys to work.

in addition, boot-camp assistant must be running as a background application for those thigns to work.

IF you can't find bootcamp assistant, i recommend that you 'repair' it from your programs and features control panel option.

i did it with mine and it worked. 🙂

Bootcamp Assistant is the Mac Application used to format the BootCamp partition. There is no such thing as a 'Bootcamp Assistant' in Windows as far as I know. If you're referring to the BootCamp drivers, then yes, those have to be running. The only thing you can "repair" really is the BootCamp Services package. As for the "fix", repairing did absolutely nothing for me. Repairing is comparable to just reinstalling the drivers (though the latter is much more thorough).

Zacpod wrote:

Repair didn't change anything for me. Brightness controls are still non-functional.

Maybe it's because I'm running x64... Repaired 3x so far, and still have the same issue.

I think I'll just install Catalyst Control Panel from ATI and use its brightness controls instead. 😟

Repair didn't work for me as well. I'm also on x64. I thought about the CCC option, but the MBP 6750M driver seems to be off the main trunk for driver updates, as Catalyst 11.5 fails to recognize that we have Mobility ATI Cards (you can still install the new driver if you get the direct package through the AMD akamai host). As for CCC itself, none of the options in there actually work for me, which also includes brightness. Let me know if this works though? It may be I just need to reinstall from the ground up.

guinhee wrote:

In my case, I updated my NVIDIA driver to the newest one, and changed the brightness in the NVIDIA control panel which is accessible by right clicking on the desktop.

Unfortunately, this issue doesn't affect NVIDIA graphics (well, I guess it would matter to the MBA). The majority of the problem stems from the AMD/ATI 6000 series GPUs on 2011 MBPs and iMacs. AMD hasn't released a driver update that bundles in default support for us (the driver does install though...).

It's still a step in the right direction. See, I noticed the problem generally fixed itself after software updates (specifically firmware updates). Resetting PRAM is often a component of firmware updates.

This implies our problem is firmware based.

Something I thought was that at least I could reset the PRAM before a long windows session so that I could change the brightness as needed, and it should work as long as I didn't boot into MacOS. Unfortunately, this hasn't been really successful for me. After resetting the PRAM, the system seems to crash on the first Windows boot, and I have to hold down the power button and reboot again, after which the brightness is full blast. When I do manage to get into Windows, the brightness control doesn't work anymore.

Hey all,

I'm using a 2009 iMac intel dual core with snow leopard. I'm in Hong Kong so I left my Snow Lopard disk at home, so I ran into similar problems as you guys, except with Bootcamp 2.0 which came with the iMac computer. Anyways, my colution was to update my nvidia driver. After that, my keys worked perfectly. Try it out!

Ok guys. I'm back again.

Found a new way WITHOUT zapping PRAM. Don't know if it works for you guys. Worth a try on this serious Screen Dim issue.

I've just installed the new OS Lion. Don't know if it's the Lion that helps it out or not. I also have rEFIT installed into my Mac.

After turning on your MacBook Pro, once you heard the boot up sound, hold on to the EJECT button till rEFIT screen comes up. (You can let go of the button now.)

Choose your Windows OS and boot it in.

Press F1 or F2 and the screen dim comes back to life.

Boot Camp control panel in windows will still be missing the Brightness adjustment.

So try it out guys and let me know if this method works for you on Snow Leopard or Lion. Really hope it helps you guys rather than zapping the PRAM everytime and worrying if it will cause the Mac OS to malfunction in some ways or another.

Same thing here, I noticed my brightness controls worked when I switched to Lion and reFiT stopped working. After reinstalling Lion to the final release I tried it again and got reFiT working by manual install but the brightness did not work again, uninstalled reFiT and the brightness started working again.

Edit: I hope someone is able to get reFiT working again properly it was one of hte best addon for people who used bootcamp.

My friend bought a macbook pro in May of this year. I installed bootcamp and Windows 7 on it. Automatic updates were not turned on. This week she said the Windows portion was too slow. So I installed Service pack 1, Windows Updates, etc etc.

The computer works properly except that one of the updates probably disabled the brightness adjustments, similar to what is happening to other people here. I didn't install any special bootladers or anything. Just boot camp.

MBA, with annoying brightness problem after windows 7 32 bits update at 4 days ago. F1 and F2 failed to operate as everbody here encountered, with the ! sign in the Device Manager at the Display Adapter and Bluetooth Peripheral device, after uninstalled it and restart succeed to gain the proper driver for Display Adapter(shown as Nvidia Driver), but still having the problem with ! sign at Bluetooth Peripheral device. but still can't get the proper brightness adjustment from the Nvidia control or from the F1 and F2. and have tried to update the display driver through the update tab in the driver properties through online update but came up as my driver was in the latest version at mean time.

After trying for so many days, and make up my mind to download a new Bootcamp 3.2 (which i had too in my computer that i had updated months ago) and installed again still without any progress. Then tried again with the driver update in the Driver properties and found that it had a new version of driver to be download and install, in the installation process, the brightness suddenly came back to its proper level, and after installation finish, the F1 and F2 resume the proper operation and i got back to the normal control.

Went back to the Device Manager and found that the Display Adapter name have changed to Nvidia Geforce 320M.

Advice to let your brightness level to atleast at minimal 1 or 2 level before the update process, don't close all the level as you may get a black screen in the driver update progress and scare **** up to you .

Hope this may help people with the same MBA with the same problem.

I also have the brightness problem with my iMac (early 2011) running Lion and my MBP 2011 (new model) running Windows 7 x64.

when I'm using the iMac as an external monitor for the MBP running windows 7, the brightness can no longer be adjusted...

After searching for a solution for a LOONG time, I ended up installing this little tool - DIMMER:

http://www.mylittlehost.com/dimmer.aspx

I think it works by putting some sort of transparent layer on top of the screen - but it works fine. You can even select the transparency 🙂

Hope this helps in some way!

please note, not all terms may be accurate, but the concept does work...

Problem: unable to control screen brightness in Windows OS after boot drive option automatically boots to Mac OS and than switching to Windows OS.

Solution(at least as I have found to work consistently): Don't boot into Mac initially, hold 'option' or 'alt' and press the power button and choose the Windows OS drive and boot straight to Windows.

-OR-

Set the default drive to Windows OS and hold 'option' or 'alt' when you desire to boot into Mac OS.

To set Windows as the default, Go to Start -> Control Panel -> Boot Camp -> Yes -> And than just select the appropiate start-up drive.

As far as I can tell, this does work consistently, and is escpecially good if you have to use Windows OS often, or even half the time, as it allows the screen brightness to be changed.

Basically, or so it does seem, the reason that the screen brightness does not work on the Windows OS is because of something the Mac OS does when it is booted (not sure how/what/why, but thats the evidence).

I want to thank all of you so VERY much for working this out. This problem has been plaguing me for months. I had trouble searching for the correct term before I found this thread and it hadn't really been bothering me until I really stated using it at night.

I'm using a Macbook Pro 17" w/ Radeon HD 6750M video card. I have tried updating software, drivers, using video drivers that aren't made for this card specifically, everything else I could thing of including trying 32bit and 64bit Windows 7.

I just want to say that the solution to this was not my idea, I just followed what everyone else has done.

My problem, simply, was rEFIt.

However, I did find that by bypassing rEFIt by either holding the Option key or setting the Startup Disk in the Boot Camp application as the default boot disk (and restarting), I could get the dim function back.

I ended up removing rEFIt since it wasn't working for what I needed anyways. To the poster that was running OSX, Win 7 and Linux, try booting holding Option and bypassing rEFIt and see if that works for you.

Thank you thank you thank you again to everyone!

Now time to reinstall everything again since I was hoping that a Windows reInstall would fix it. I'm just happy this is resolved!!!

I've basically tried every solution and still no luck. The main issue for me was that whilst installing the update, I had my brightness turned down to nothing (for some reason why I close my MBP on Bootcamp , wifi drops out so instead I just turn off all brightness). As a result, I can't attempt to repair Bootcamp and such as I can't see what's going on.

Is that anything that I could possibly do?

Thanks in advance

Use a displayport/thunderboltport -> VGA or DVI adapter to hook up your MBP to an external monitor (or a Mac monitor), this will allow you to see whats going on, at least it did for me. Once I could see what's going on, I could repair bootcamp. Good luck! Let me know how it goes.

-Griffin