Helios 300 activates disabled adaptive brightness (Intel's DPST) when unplugging the power cord

VarHyid

I recently bought the Acer Helios 300 Predator PH315-51 laptop and it has a very annoying issue which may or may not be related to Acer. I already contacted Intel about it, they'll investigate it, but also asked me to contact you as their suggested solution didn't work and they said it should have.

Anyway, here's the problem - in the Intel Graphics panel, in the Power section there's an option called "Display Power Saving Technology" which, when enabled, dims the display based on what's on the screen. Ironically, it actually dims it when the screen is darker, but makes it brighter when you open a white window... to make it even brighter. I disabled this setting and so far so good.

The problem is that when I plug the laptop to a power source and then unplug it. Once it's unplugged, the screen starts to dim itself as if this option was enabled. What's even weirder is that in the Intel control panel DPST is still set as "disabled". It gets better. If I set it to "enabled", save changes, then back to "disable" and save changes again, the issue stops so somehow the switch from power adapter to battery reenables DPST without changing the actual settings.

I tried everything - Windows' display settings, the power plan is set to maximum performance, I went to its advanced settings where you can manually enable or disable adaptive brightness, select the exact brightness levels when on battery or plugged in, nothing helped. I did what Intel suggested which is - went to Windows' Services and disabled the "Sensor Monitoring Service" (+reboot), but that didn't help either, I also disabled the two other sensor-related services: "Sensor Service" and "Sensor Data Service" - no luck. I can still reliably reproduce this issue by plugging the laptop in and unplugging it.

Does anyone have an idea what else I could try or if it's really Acer's fault or maybe indeed it's a problem with Intel's graphic panel/driver? I updated the drivers of course so I'm using the latest version of Intel UHD Graphics 630 (24.20.100.6229).

Also, how can I email Acer's support directly? The support site forwards me here or to their FAQ

Red-Sand

It could be that your power plan is setup to automatically switch to the "balanced" power profile when you unplug your laptop.

You can try adjusting the adaptive brightness in the balanced profile as well and perhaps it will correct it.

As for contacting Acer Ive always found the live chat feature pretty expedient.

https://us.answers.acer.com/app/chat/chat_launch/

VarHyid

Red-Sand said:

You can try adjusting the adaptive brightness in the balanced profile as well and perhaps it will correct it.

Already tried that too. I've edited every power plan I could find and disabled any display-related technology in every plan even those that aren't active - didn't help. The strangest thing about this is that those settings don't change when it happens. I have an old notebook/tablet-hybrid from ASUS which also has Intel Graphics and when it updated itself to the latest version of Windows, adaptive brightness enabled itself too, but... I could see it set to "Enabled" in the Intel panel there and disabling it got rid of the problem permanently.

Here in the Acer laptop it always stays on disabled, yet in reality it's enabled. It sounds like it could be some other setting somewhere, but because if I enable and disable it in the Intel graphics settings and it helps, I'm sure it has to do something with those settings. Granted, maybe some Acer software loads a different Intel graphics profile in the background, but my current profile, aside from having the dimming disabled also has some screen calibration set up (minor adjustment - blue channel set to -6%) and when this happens, the colors don't change so it can't be a reset of the whole profile otherwise the white point would also get more blue.

Red-Sand

Im just gonna shoot out options.

Option 1:

1. Launch "Intel HD Graphics Control Panel" by right clicking and selecting "Graphics Properties..." from your Intel HD Graphics tray icon (Or hit Control+ALT+F12)
2. Click Power
3. Choose "On battery"
4. Select "Disable" for Display Power Saving Technology
5. Click Apply

Option 2:

1. Select the Start button.
2. Type Regedit and then press Enter.
3. Navigate to the paths below and then double-click ProcAmpBrightness.
   • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Intel\Display\igfxcui\profiles\media\Brighten Movie
   • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Intel\Display\igfxcui\profiles\media\Darken Movie
4. Change the value to 0.
5. Close Regedit and then restart your PC.

Option 3: 

1. Select the Start button.
2. Type Command Prompt.
3. Right-click Command Promptand then select Run as administrator.
4. If prompted, select Yes or enter the administrator password.
5. In the Command Promptwindow, type the command below and then press Enter.
   • powercfg -restoredefaultschemes
6. Close Command Prompt.
7. Restart your PC.
8. Select the Start button.
9. Type Power Options and then press Enter.
10. Click Change plan settings > Change advanced power settings.
11. Navigate to Display > Enable adaptive brightness.
12. Set adaptive brightness to Off.
13. Click OK to complete.

Let me know if any of these work.

VarHyid

Option 1 - yes, this of course works... until I plug the laptop in and unplug it again. That's the whole problem, then I have to set it to enable and then disable again and it works again... until I plug it in and unplug it and so on.

Option 2 - tried that already during the initial Googling session - didn't help either.

Option 3 - haven't tried it yet, but... wouldn't this just reset everything, make me set it up as it is now again? The adaptive brightness part is already done - I went to those advanced settings, went through everything there, set it all up to most performance, no power saving modes etc.

Technically, every settings is set correctly and it all works correctly... until a switch from "plugged in" to "on battery" happens. BTW, in case I didn't make it clear, once I enable and disable the Intel graphics settings while I'm on battery, then it will still keep working fine while on battery, even after full shutdown and reboot, the only trigger for this issue is the switch from plugged in to battery so whenever I need to charge it, I must do the "turn it on and back off again" for the Intel power setting. What happens during the switch to battery - no idea.

Red-Sand

Ohhhh well then try this..

Navigate to C:/Windows/Prefetch

And delete everything except "layout.ini" in that folder.

Its the "fast startup" driver/program list folder.. perhaps something in there is resetting your setup on boot.
Delete the contents and disable like in Option 1 and reboot.

VarHyid

Red-Sand said:

(...) perhaps something in there is resetting your setup on boot.

This isn't happening on boot. Let me explain this again, in 3 simple steps:

STEP 1 - I'm using the laptop on battery, the screen is NOT getting dimmed, everything works fine. No problems.

STEP 2 - I plug in the power cord so now I'm powering the laptop from the grid. The screen still isn't dimming itself, everything's fine.

STEP 3 - I pull the power cord out... and now the screen starts to dim itself immediately. There's no reboot in between, I'm not even closing the lid, the laptop isn't waking up from sleep. Just pulling the power cord out immediately activates the dimming.

At this point I have to go to Intel's control panel, turn the dimming on (cause technically it's still disabled there), then turn it off and now I'm back at step 1 where everything works fine... until I connect and disconnect the power cord and I can reproduce this multiple times even during the same session, while the laptop is on.

Again, either it's really a bug with Intel's drivers and they have to fix it, or Acer implemented some power saving solution somewhere and it ignores Intel's settings which is why it always reactivates this feature when I switch from being plugged in to battery.

Red-Sand

Have you tried using Acer's Intel VGA driver?
They make their own hardware I've found their drivers work best for performance/stability since they are custom.

FlorinAndrei

@VarHyid looks like the solution is in this thread:

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/614186

Open Intel Graphics Control Panel, go to Power / Display Power Saving Technology = disable

VarHyid

@FlorinAndrei That was the first thing I tried. Doesn't work.