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ustahir1

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 18, 2010
36
0
I have a mid 2010 macbook pro (yes I know it is old) but I've had it so long but I only use it when I'm home & it still works so well I don't really want to replace it.

Recently I have had trouble with adjusting the brightness of the screen through the keyboard. I am able to put the keyboard lights on/off via keyboard but F1/F2 doesn't do anything. The slider is missing in the display settings to I cannot adjust at all. I've installed Brightness Slider from the app store and it does allow me to change the brightness but it used to go a lot brighter. when I reduce the brightness via the app it also goes to various levels of low, from 1) does't change at all, 2) reduces brightness & 3) goes black so something isn't right with whatever is controlling the brightness.

I've tried searching through these forums and other sites and so far I can come up with 4 options
1) Backlight no longer works
2) Broken inverter
3) Broken ambient light sensor
4) Something else

Really struggling with figuring out which one of these it is or if it is another issue. Again I appreciate it is an old macbook, I'm not looking for anything crazy just hoping to figure out what the cause is & if it's possible to fix myself.

Details:
Mid 2010, 15inch, anti-glare screen
OS X El Capitan, 10.11.6
Only thing worth a mention is it had a battery swell up so the apple store removed it, they weren't able to get parts to it now only runs when plugged into the charger. I can't remember if this issue started before or after

Thank you
 
Is autobrightness turned on? Might as well try turning it off if it is.

But that's really odd about the slider not being in your display settings. Maybe a clean install of the OS is worth trying. Try booting in safe mode first to see if some software you've run is causing trouble.
 
So another thing to throw into the mix which I've recently discovered is that when I start my laptop I cannot adjust anything in brightness and there are no options of auto adjust or a slider. However if I restart it then the option comes back & I'm able to adjust via the keyboard again!

I have turned auto adjust off now so will see if this helps next time I use it
 
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