Brightness Not Working on Windows 11? Here’s how to Fix It

Windows 11 is still in development, so early adopters are kind of expected to face certain bugs and inconsistencies until a stable public build is finally out. But you can’t really condone the frustration of some Windows 11 users that are tucked with a dimmed screen with no real possibility to change the brightness.

Most affected users report that the brightness slider is there, but a lot of users are saying that nothing happens when they use it. This error prevents people from changing the brightness of their screen, despite using a computer, laptop, or notebook.

How to Fix Brightness Not Working on Windows 11 Error

If you do a quick search online, you’ll find that there are a lot of users affected by this problem and they’re all scrambling to find a solution to fix this extremely frustrating issue on Windows 11.

There are many methods to change the brightness of Windows 11 –  using the Settings, using keyboard shortcuts, or using dedicated graphics card apps, but unfortunately, if you’re affected by this glitch, none of them will work.

However, after digging around, we finally discovered a fix that a lot of users have deemed to be victorious in allowing them to finally adjust the screen brightness again.

It’s actually a combination of different troubleshooting methods that will virtually take care of every known situation that will essentially prevent you from modifying the screen’s brightness on Windows 11.

So there are 2 main causes for this particular brightness issue on Windows 11:

After investigating this issue, it’s clear that the two culprits go hand in hand. So when troubleshooting this issue, you will need to take measures against both of these scenarios.

Follow the instructions below for step by step instructions on fixing the Windows 11 issue where you can’t adjust the brightness of your screen:

1. Press the Windows key + R to open a Run dialog box, then inside it you need to type ‘devmgmt.msc’ and press Enter. When you’re prompted by the User Account Control, click Yes to grant admin access.

   

2. After the Device Manager appears on your screen, expand the drop-down menu where it says Monitors. Next, right-click on the monitor, then click on Disable device.
   

   

   Note: Once you do this, the generic driver will stop being used as Windows migrates to a different display driver.

3. Then, once the generic driver has been disabled, right-click on the monitor and click on Properties from the context menu that just appeared.

   

4. Inside the properties menu, click on Driver tab located at the top of the screen, then click on Update Driver.
   

   

5. You will have two options to choose from, so choose Search automatically for drivers. After the search is complete, you can close the menu.

   

6. After that, open another Run dialog box by pressing the Windows key + R, and type cmd, then press Ctrl + Shift + Enter to open the CMD prompt with administrator privileges. When you’re prompted by the User Account Control window, click Yes to confirm the admin access.
   

   

7. Once you’re finally inside the elevated CMD prompt, type the following commands and press Enter after each one to effectively repair the ieframe.dll file and every associated dependency:

   chkdsk
   prompt
   sfc /scanfile=c:\windows\system32\ieframe.dll
   sfc /verifyfile=c:\windows\system32\ieframe.dll
   assoc
   sfc /scannow

8. After the process is complete, type exit to close the Command Prompt, then the only thing left to do is to reboot your PC. Afterward, you can check to see if you still encounter the brightness not working problem.

At this point, you should be able to modify the screen brightness on Windows 11.