What to do when the screen becomes dim in Windows 7, but the mouse cursor remains bright white

11/27/2013

Once in a while, I load up my Windows 7 PC and, for some inexplicable reason, everything on the screen appears a bit too dim and grey (except for the mouse cursor, which remains bright white). The above image shows the problem, albeit somewhat exaggerated. It only happens rarely though, and restarting the PC usually makes it go away - though having to restart is frustrating.

Googling reveals that a lot of people get this problem, though few seem to know what the source is or how to fix it, and it took me a long time to find the solution. Though I finally did (at least, it works for me):

press the Windows key
type "Calibrate display color" and press enter
When the Display Color Calibration window pops up, press "next", then simply close it.
Done. The screen should now be bright again.

I still don't know why the problem exists, or why doing the above fixes it, but it seems to fix it every time.

Dave Bleja

Dave is a graphics professional and longtime PC power-user. He spends more on his gaming rig than a reasonable person should. He founded the indie game studio Volnaiskra, and is the creative force behind Spryke.

35 Comments

Jason Busse

7/15/2014 04:38:48 am

Worked perfectly for me!

FAHD IQBAL MALIK link

9/8/2014 07:36:44 pm

it worked for me ty, i thought it was my monitor

Jennifer

11/15/2014 06:32:39 pm

Spot on, thank you so much for this!!

Rod

11/18/2014 12:39:39 pm

amazing! Thanks!

Pinki

12/16/2014 09:48:19 am

works great thanks man..u r the boss...

Ian

2/2/2015 12:05:34 am

Thank you!

Dawn

2/2/2015 03:00:45 pm

THANK YOU!!! <3

ndwpgs

2/16/2015 04:04:21 am

thanks so much for this fix!

Maxon link

3/25/2015 02:10:52 am

You, sir, deserve a medal!

My saviour!!!

Tony Meacock

6/4/2015 06:32:58 pm

It worked for me, thanks.
Turns out it was one of those "You may not be alone"
problems.

Oursoul

6/24/2015 10:52:47 am

This has been bugging me for ages, every couple of months i'd turn my pc on to get a dim screen even though the settings on the monitor are cranked up and all brightnesses set to 100% - brilliant, thanks mate :)

Kien

8/14/2015 02:17:30 am

Awesome. Thanks!

Julian

9/20/2015 03:24:54 am

I was about to ditch the monitor. Many thanks!

Florian

11/5/2015 07:42:40 am

ThX max.
THIS IS SILLY THAT WINDOWS STILL HAS THIS KIND OF BUGS

Jon

11/14/2015 11:30:33 pm

THANK YOU! I thought my monitor was broken (or that I was simply going crazy and only "thought" that it looked darker than yesterday) but this completely fixed it!

For anyone else wondering, you have to click "Next" through all the pages for this to work.

Cona

3/31/2016 04:54:57 pm

thank you very much, this worked and was quick

Ron Lindholm

4/14/2016 04:11:27 pm

Thanks for advice. It works!

But how do I fix this permanently? I find this problem annoying. Not also that I have had Windows 7 for a couple of years and this problem has occurred in the last weeks.

heppi

8/2/2016 11:42:28 pm

this trick not working for me, facing dim screen problem always every login, cant control in power management cant control in control panel, Fn keys unable to control too

Elena

11/14/2016 07:39:36 pm

It worked for me. Thank you!

Jenny Garner

12/16/2016 09:15:17 am

Thank you thank you thank you, got a windows update and it downgraded my system! The screen was dull and nothing on the settings helped. This trick though, that worked instantly. You are a wonderful person for posting this. Thank you again.

Joy

5/8/2017 05:24:19 am

I needed to go through all the "Calibrate display color" steps to get the changes to stick. That added another ICC Profile in the Color Management for my system.

I think this problem started after one of my cats laid on the keyboard. I checked Control Panel > Ease of Access > Optimize visual display. I noticed High Contrast theme was enabled although I did not make any changes. That option has associated keyboard shortcuts. So I think something was triggered by kitty-keyboard interaction. However just disabling that ease of access setting wasn't good enough. I had to recalibrate.

This isn't the first time kitty changed an ease of access setting - a few months ago he caused my system to add a lot of beeping.

Greg Dickens

7/31/2017 05:56:26 am

Still a great fix. Thanks.

James

11/2/2017 12:17:02 am

This just started happening to me, and this is the only website (after much searching) that had an answer. I have a laptop and two external screens at my desk and I plug into external screens at different workstations as well. Every single screen this was happening to. I had to open up the "Calibrate Display Color" on every screen individually (just moving the box manually) for the brightness to return on each one.

Elaine R Slansky

1/11/2018 02:10:22 am

After updating my WiFi drivers, my external screen suddenly dimmed even though I hadn't changed anything on the display. Power options had it at it's brightest, along with the brightness control on the external monitor itself. After spending an hour trying to find an answer, this site popped up - and it worked! Thanks so much (how the heck WiFi driver affects the display I will never know).

Kiran

1/30/2018 06:25:55 am

Plz help me my laptop screen get darker even black ...all the functions working properly but I m having a problem in vision ...how can I overcome my problem ....

2/4/2018 01:06:19 pm

Kiran, first, do you have screen brightness buttons included on the top row of your laptop? On my Chromebook, for some unknown reason, the screen just gets darker over time, and I just have to tap on the screen brightness button every so often.

Since my last post here about my desktop computer, every few weeks/months, when my screen dimmed, I repeated the recommendation originally given here about calibrating the display color. In late December my monitor began experiencing other hardware-related issues - including causing a blue screen of death. I haven't experienced the same dimming issues since replacing the monitor. It's still too early to conclude that my original dimming issue was related to slow monitor failure.

Thank you

4/7/2018 08:02:26 pm

Thanks a lot, mate. This solved the problem in seconds.

Dan

5/9/2018 05:58:28 am

Thank you it worked perfectly

sonia

6/6/2018 07:05:11 pm

thankx a lot.....it works

Eric Brand

8/22/2018 07:38:08 am

tried your "calibrate" fix, and it worked for one glorious moment when i got through all the "nexts." but as soon as i closed the window, it went back to dim. any ideas? help!

Mike link

10/18/2018 10:39:48 pm

I'd like to offer a permanent solution. As many awesome people said, you should disable automatic something IF you have the option to do so in Power Options.

If you 're on desktop though, you don't have any of that. I found that the issue was on my monitor since it had a feature called SMART ENERGY SAVING. I guess it's not so smart after all. It just changes brightness just for the sake of it, it does nothing to save energy but change brightness. Switch it OFF from your Monitor MENU and you'll be fine :)

Have an awesome day

Hotmail login account link

6/23/2020 06:54:53 pm

Thank you so much! This helps a lot.

Jeff

11/22/2020 10:39:08 am

At the admin login screen my computer is bright. The first key I touch it dims. I have no tools to adjust it with there is no dimmer slide control, no brightness nor contrast tools whatsoever. When I run the update program for my video it works until I restart and log in again. I reinstalled the original driver from dell, updated it with win zip updater, which worked fine until update. My sound has been removed also. I have no sound device. For a while I was not able to download anything. The download installer was missing. all at the same time.

Samuel Hill link

12/15/2020 10:33:25 pm

Your blog is one thing I check almost everyday on the internet. With great and reliable information people can learn, know and grasp many aspects happening around the world. Well, I am happy to read your blog section. Thank you for posting fruitful content.

Oliver

1/10/2021 12:12:01 am

If this doesn't help, check the pixel format in your GPU drivers. Mine had an 8-bit format for my 10-bit screen. After setting it to 10-bit, the issue has been resolved completely.

What to do when the screen becomes dim in Windows 7, but the mouse cursor remains bright white

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