Automatic Brightness Greyed Out

Hi Lencias1,

Thank you for your contribution in the Microsoft community. I'm sorry to hear about your troubles with Surface Pro 3. Let me confirm what I understand. When you go to Settings > Change PC settings > PC and devices > Power and sleep,  the slider to adjust the screen brightness automatically is grayed out.  I apologize for that. I can only imagine how this is frustrating. I'm happy to help and guide you.

In order to better assist can you provide a little more details:

1. When did it start?
2. Have you made any changes or installed any software or updates prior to that?
3. Do you have all Windows updates installed?
4. Have you restarted your Surface?

I'll suggest a system refresh.  Be aware that this will uninstall all apps, games or software installed in the Surface. You will have to re install them after the process is over. Personal files are not affected.

I hope that will help to solve the problem.Your feeback is much appreciated.

Yours,

1) No idea when the issue started, but I first noticed it the day after I got my SP3.

2) Yes, I have to do work on it so I installed the usual MS Office and Adobe CC stuff as well as a myriad of other software that I'd install on any computer for the first time.

3) Yes, all updates installed.

4) Yes, between now and when I got it the device has been restarted multiple times. 

I'd really rather not refresh the system as I only recently finished setting up all my software, nor does essentially completely wiping the system and starting over seem like a particularly practical solution for a problem of this scale. 

Lencias1,

Are you still having this issue? Try restarting, check for updates. If the issue persists, please consider e refresh.

Let us know.

Cheers,

I too have just started getting this problem  It has only started since I last did a refresh.  I really don't want to do a refresh again because then I'll have to reinstall Office and other apps.  Is there another way to restore this capability?

D

p.s. I'm fully up to date on all updates

I notice today i have the same issue

Same problem here,

I've reset the PC to factory settings, yet still the adaptive brightness does not work. And the OS seems not to respond on the manual slider as well. I have a Surface Pro (1st gen)

Besides, the "SensorDiagnosticsTablet.diagcab" tool Microsoft provides, is crashing every time: "Native Host for scriptdiagnostics does not work anymore".

I have same issue on SP3 as the author of this topic, but cannot get the sensor diagnostic tool to work. Sensor diagnostic tell me that windows location is turned off?

The slider is greyd out in the Surface Pro settings and I have to use the advanced settings to activate it.

EDIT: Solved with Windows Update

I'm on a SP3 and have the same problem.  All Updates are installed.  I'm not interested in doing a refresh.

There must be another way.

I was having the same issue.   Try going to Power Options from Desktop or Control Panel.  Click Advanced Power Option.  From there expand the the Display option then expand the "Enable adaptive brightness"  Make sure both battery and plugged are set to "on"  Then go back to charms and swipe from right.