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    Brightness keys and light sensor no longer working...

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by pjshots, Sep 2, 2009.

  1. pjshots

    pjshots Notebook Consultant

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    Hi,

    Any way to fix the above problem. It seemed to stop by itself after an apple update. Am on 10.6 with no other issues so far. Any way I can remove the update?

    Thanks.
     
    pjshots, Sep 2, 2009
    #1
  2. D3X

    D3X the robo know it all

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    The 10.6 update (Snow Leopard) is the same update that was aplied to Leopard a few months ago. The ambient light feature has now been modified on the MBP, and if it senses enough light, it will disable the backlight. You cannot override this unless you cover up the light sensor which is near the iSight camera. Technically it's not "broken" but modified, this usually never bothers me as I know I'm saving energy/battery and the Keyboard backlight simply isn't needed.
     
    D3X, Sep 2, 2009
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  3. pjshots

    pjshots Notebook Consultant

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    I know about the light sensor and keyboard backlight and never had an issue; currently though my keyboard backlight never comes on and the brightness never changes when I enter a dark room like it did before yesterday.

    Leopard NEVER did this and I've applied all updates to it. SL never did this either up until last night. There is no option to turn the light sensor off in the Display properties if system prefs anymore either. It seems to have afftected my volume buttons also. I don't know whats happened but I'll do a complete reinstall and see if that solves it.
     
    pjshots, Sep 3, 2009
    #3
  4. ClearSkies

    ClearSkies Well no, I'm still here..

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    I found a new button in 10.6's SystemPrefs last night (I think it was under Keyboard), with a slider to adjust a new timer for how long before turning off the kb backlight. Try searching in there, you might find something that got un/selected which is causing your issue.

    Apple also rearranged quite a few things in SystemPrefs that I've ended up having to search around for, and added some other new things (i.e. speaker volume is muted automatically, always, on startup) as well.
     
    ClearSkies, Sep 3, 2009
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  5. pjshots

    pjshots Notebook Consultant

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    Thanks for that. After routing around for some time, I still couldn't find a way to get it to return to normal. I knew it wasn't the keyboard as I have Win 7 bootcamp and it worked ok in that mode. It was just osx where it didn't.

    Did a fresh install and it looks to be sorted anyhow. Apart from the option to control the sensor in the display options, the keyboard light time out, I also lost access to my volume buttons too; not sure why. The last big thing I installed was CS4; the whole thing. Have installed just Photoshop tonight and all still seems ok. Can't imagine CS4 having anything to do with it as I used that on 10.5 and it worked fine.

    A strange thing.....
     
    pjshots, Sep 3, 2009
    #5