How to Increase the Brightness on Your Dell Laptop Monitor

This afternoon as I was reading a post on the Digital Point forum, my cat sat on my keyboard. Actually, first he sat on the pillow I keep propped up against the wall. Then the phone rang and I proceeded to talk to my friend Debra.

That's when StormCat made his move. Before I knew it, kitty had moved from the pillow to the keyboard of my Inspiron 2600 laptop. At first I didn't think anything of it—being distracted by the phone call, I let him be. After saying goodbye to my friend and returning my attention to my computer, I realized that the brightness on the monitor was about half of normal.


At this point I was near panic. I had already been having a bad day. Due to a malfunctioning washing machine, I had spent most of the afternoon wringing out wet laundry by hand and worrying about where to get the money for repairs or a replacement machine.

I should have put two and two together, but I guess I was just too tired and worried to think straight. I started searching for answers, first with my Windows help and then on Google. Finally, after doing a Google search ("monitor brightness" site:dell.com +laptop), I found a link to the Inspiron 9400 User Manual.

Phew, what a relief! Once I found the answer, it was obvious to me what had happened—the cat had changed the brightness setting when he lay down on my keyboard...


On page 37 was the answer to my problem:


You can press the following keys to adjust display brightness:

1. Press "Fn" and the up-arrow key to increase brightness on the integrated display only (not on an external monitor).


2. Press the "Fn" key and the down-arrow key to decrease brightness on the integrated display only (not on an external monitor).

StormCat:

One of these days...

Actually, I had never heard of the "Fn" key before. It took me a while to find it on my Dell Inspiron, it's the key to the right of the "Ctrl" key, in the lower left corner of the keyboard.

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Addendum

The original version of this post was made several years ago. Since then, StormCat (he's actually my roommate's pet) has become an outdoor cat and hardly ever spends any time in my room. And I no longer use my laptop keyboard, I prefer a wireless keyboard and mouse.

However, I have had the monitor dimming problem a couple of times. It was caused by the power saving settings on my laptop. I usually use my laptop plugged-in to a power strip. Occasionally, the cord will get pulled out of the power cord port, when that happens my monitor goes dim to save power.

Wireless Keyboard