Screen brightness issues on Windows 11 Insider build 25314

Windows 11 Insider build 25314 was released on 8th March 2023. It superseded the Insider build 25309 for Windows 11. Upon installation of Windows 11 insider build 25314, you may run into an issue with screen brightness.

Let us review the issue that has been brought to the attention of Microsoft.

Issue description of screen brightness on Windows 11 insider build 25314

• When you install or upgrade to Windows 11 insider build 253154, the system loses its brightness upon restart.

• Basically, your computer will work as if it has been permanently placed in battery saver mode.

• The screen brightness reduces to such an extent that your computer becomes unusable.

• All the troubleshooting steps shared below failed to resolve the screen brightness issue on Windows 11 insider build 25314.

• Finally, a fix was applied to get the Windows 11 insider computer back to a working level.

Troubleshooting of screen brightness on Windows 11 insider build 25314

All the suggested troubleshooting steps were carried out as per the instructions below. However, none of these steps helped in restoring screen brightness on Windows 11 insider build 25314.

• Before doing anything else, I used the ‘Screen brightness’ slider to turn on the brightness to the highest level. Nothing changes and the screen brightness remained low.

• I tried to use the ‘Screen brightness’ function key on my notebook. Nothing changed and it appeared that the ‘Screen brightness’ function key was unresponsive.

• From the device manager, I uninstalled the display adapter and monitor from the Windows 11 insider build 25314 computer. Generic drives for display and monitor were added and the system was restarted. This step did not yield any difference. Screen brightness remained low and unresponsive to the screen brightness controls.

• I tried to validate the integrity of the registry using sfc /scannow command. All files and registry state showed no issues under the integrity checks. So, we know that the registry was healthy.

• I went to the Intel website and downloaded the latest display driver for my notebook. Upon restart, the system continued to work with low screen brightness. This fix also failed.

• I ran the two-phase diagnostics on my HP notebook to see if it shows any hardware issue. However, both passes ended on a positive note. No hardware issues were detected.

• At this point, it was clear that the screen brightness controls were not responding. The computer was as good as a ‘battery saver’ mode computer. This did affect productivity to a large extent as the laptop screen was unreadable.

Fix for screen brightness on Windows 11 insider build 25314

All standard fixes were applied to see if the screen brightness on Windows 11 insider build 25314 improves or normalizes. However, all the steps failed.

It was quite obvious that the insider build 25314 caused some changes to the screen brightness controls. So, the only way to get over the issue was to go back to the previous Windows 11 insider build 25309.

So, I attempted to ‘Go back’ to the previous Windows 11 insider build 25319.

• Go to Settings and choose ‘Recovery’ as displayed in the screenshot below. You can launch the ‘Settings’ pane by pressing the Windows + X key and then choosing ‘Settings’ from the context menu.

• Click on ‘Recovery’ to bring up the recovery options on Windows 11 insider build 25314.

• From the ‘Recovery options’, choose the ‘Go Back’ option to revert to the preceding Windows 11 insider build. Since Windows 11 insider build 25309 precedes insider build 25314, we will be reverting from insider build 25314 to Windows 11 insider build 25309.

You can see that I cannot ‘Go Back’ on my Windows 11 insider edition. This is because I have already reverted from Windows 11 insider build 25314 to Windows 11 insider build 25309.

• The ‘Go Back’ option will allow you to revert to the previous Windows 11 insider build 25309. On

• Once the Windows 11 insider build has been downgraded from build 25314 to 25309, the screen brightness issue will be resolved.

You can use the ‘Screen brightness’ controls as you would have used as part of the normal operations of the computer.

Summary

We have seen how the Windows 11 insider build 25314 has caused issues with screen brightness. The screen brightness controls do not work on a computer after installation of Windows 11 insider build 25314.

We have used a lot of steps to try and resolve the issue. However, the only thing that worked is to use the ‘Go Back’ recovery options to revert from Windows 11 insider build 25314 to Windows 11 insider build 25309.