How I (Finally) Got My Brightness Keys Working

By mike on May 26, 2010

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The brightness controls on my Lenovo ThinkPad W510 were not working at first. The display was stuck on a really bright setting which was tough on the eyes. I asked a user on UbuntuForums to help.

He showed me what to do, and recommended the ThinkWiki page for the W510.

Here is the fix:

sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Then add the following line at the bottom of the “device” section.

Option “RegistryDwords” “EnableBrightnessControl=1″

Posted in brightness, lenovo thinkpad w510, thinkwiki, ubuntu, xorg.conf | Tagged bright, brightness, controls, eyes, fix, keys, lenovo, thinkpad, thinkwiki, ubuntu, ubuntuforums, w510, work

20911 responses to “How I (Finally) Got My Brightness Keys Working”2010-05-26+13%3A31%3A02mike

landog
August 15, 2010 at 6:16 am | Permalink | Reply

What if you have no xorg.conf file in /etc/X11 ???
1. m6arate
  November 22, 2010 at 8:52 pm | Permalink | Reply
  
  you should be able to safely create the file.
Mike
October 9, 2010 at 3:40 pm | Permalink | Reply

this change in the Xorg.conf makes my W510 to hang while booting… the only thing that helps is to use the brightness-buttons while being in the grup menu.

hope this gets fixed soon…
1. m6arate
  November 22, 2010 at 8:51 pm | Permalink | Reply
  
  should work now. After a good deal of poking I finally found the problem- the wrong type of " character. What a pesky little thing… oh well. Good luck!
  1. Eran Harel
    January 1, 2011 at 10:23 am | Permalink | Reply
    
    yeah, there's some funky character there (the last character is ″ but should be ").
    please fix your post…
    
    The line should read:
    Option "RegistryDwords" "EnableBrightnessControl=1"
Howard
January 10, 2011 at 8:35 pm | Permalink | Reply

Thanks a lot. It works for me, however the effect seems a transient one and whenever I login from a locked screen, it restores to the max brightness so i have to adjust it again.

Howard
jelabarre
September 28, 2011 at 12:05 pm | Permalink | Reply

Ha, you should consider yourself lucky it shows full brightness. *MY* w510 always comes up dimmed, regardless of whether it's on battery, on it's monster 135w power brick, etc. I can't a darned thing on it.
PLPL
October 7, 2011 at 4:38 am | Permalink | Reply

Thank you, my lap working fine now, the brightness problem has bothered me for quite some time.
Tricky Harry
April 26, 2012 at 3:26 am | Permalink | Reply

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?p=15…

Based on your instructions, it also works on Fedora 16

For those of us with a more complicated xorg.conf – add the entry to the "Device" Stanza, with
"Identifier Device0"

<—- Start /etc/X11/xorg.conf section —>

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "nvidia"
#Option "RegistryDwords" "EnableBrightnessControl=1"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Device0"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
BoardName "Quadro FX 880M"
Option "RegistryDwords" "EnableBrightnessControl=1"
EndSection

<—- End /etc/X11/xorg.conf section —>
1. TrickyHarry
  April 26, 2012 at 3:29 am | Permalink | Reply
  
  Somehow the 'zero' looks like the letter 'o' in this font:-
  
  That is
  "Videocard'ZERO'"
  Identifier "Device'ZERO'"
Leonid
May 3, 2012 at 9:57 am | Permalink | Reply

Dude, change ( " ) symbol to the normal one! Yours are making computers stuck at boot!