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2009 iMac - Brightness settings won't save?

M

MaskAndWig

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 11, 2009
41
1
I've been lurking here for several months, learning a LOT. Thanks to the rumors here of an iMac refresh, I put off my initial plans to buy one back in December. Last Tuesday, I went to the local Apple store and bought one of the new 24-inch models (3.06 GHz/4GB RAM/1TB HD). So far, it's been running very well.

However, the monitor's default brightness setting is far too bright for my eyes, so the first thing I did was to open the System Preferences pane and reduce the brightness setting. That worked fine until I shut the computer down. On rebooting, the brightness returned to its default highest setting. On my older iMac G5, the brightness setting always stayed put. It isn't a huge problem since adjusting the brightness setting does work, but I don't want to have to adjust it every time I reboot my computer.

I spent two hours yesterday on the phone with Apple support trying to fix the problem, even going so far as to reinstall the system software with no success. The woman on the phone finally suggested that I return the Mac for a replacement.

Has anyone else here with a 2009 iMac experienced this problem? Is it possible that it's hardware related? If so, could this be the tip of the iceberg suggesting a potentially larger problem down the road? I would have guessed it might be a software glitch. (The new iMac has thrust me, finally, into Leopard; until last week I was using Tiger on my older G5.) I bought the 3-year Apple Care with it--since the new iMacs have only been out a week, should I wait until the next Leopard update and see if that fixes the problem?

Thanks again for all the great and informative posts!
 
Graphics card

Thanks for the reply. The graphics card is NVIDIA GT 130. Is there a relatively easy fix if it's a driver problem?
 
MaskAndWig said:
Thanks for the reply. The graphics card is NVIDIA GT 130. Is there a relatively easy fix if it's a driver problem?
Click to expand...

yup, just wait for a driver update, assuming you're set up for updates.

Can you go to the Apple store and test this with one of their machines? It should behave the same way, confirming that there's nothing wrong with your box.
 
O.k., thanks. I'll stop by the Apple Store tomorrow (fortunately it isn't far) and will see how the new demo machines behave. Thanks again for your help!
 
Same issue here (iMac'09, 2,93, GT120). I wouldn't worry too much about it, as I don't think it's a hardware issue.
Apple will probably fix this with a driver update.
 
same issue with $1499 base model

Same thing here and I have the baseline 24" $1499 model with the 9400M integrated graphics.
 
not keeping the brightness setting is a common feature of iMacs, mine is 2 years old and any system update has solved the bug. I use Apple Script to set the brightnes on every startup:

tell application "System Preferences"
activate
set current pane to pane "com.apple.preference.displays"
tell application "System Events"
set value of slider 1 of group 2 of tab group 1 of window "iMac" of process "System Preferences" to 1.0
end tell
quit
end tell
 
As a point of interest I have anew 2009 Mac , and when using bootcamp the brightness settings are saved ,but not in Leo. So in MHO it must be a driver problem and no amount of SMC / Pram resets will cure it
 
I have a new iMac 3.06GHz, GT130 video card...and I have the same problem. It doesn't really bother me b/c I never reboot except maybe once a week or so if I install a program or update. You can use Brightness Control (freeware) and have it set to open/hide each time you log on, then your brightness can be saved that way. But I don't like Brightness Control, it dulls the image quality too much for me. I just keep my brightness turned down, you can always just use the keyboard to do it, no need to open System Prefs.
 
MaskAndWig said:
I've been lurking here for several months, learning a LOT. Thanks to the rumors here of an iMac refresh, I put off my initial plans to buy one back in December. Last Tuesday, I went to the local Apple store and bought one of the new 24-inch models (3.06 GHz/4GB RAM/1TB HD). So far, it's been running very well.

However, the monitor's default brightness setting is far too bright for my eyes, so the first thing I did was to open the System Preferences pane and reduce the brightness setting. That worked fine until I shut the computer down. On rebooting, the brightness returned to its default highest setting. On my older iMac G5, the brightness setting always stayed put. It isn't a huge problem since adjusting the brightness setting does work, but I don't want to have to adjust it every time I reboot my computer.

I spent two hours yesterday on the phone with Apple support trying to fix the problem, even going so far as to reinstall the system software with no success. The woman on the phone finally suggested that I return the Mac for a replacement.

Has anyone else here with a 2009 iMac experienced this problem? Is it possible that it's hardware related? If so, could this be the tip of the iceberg suggesting a potentially larger problem down the road? I would have guessed it might be a software glitch. (The new iMac has thrust me, finally, into Leopard; until last week I was using Tiger on my older G5.) I bought the 3-year Apple Care with it--since the new iMacs have only been out a week, should I wait until the next Leopard update and see if that fixes the problem?

Thanks again for all the great and informative posts!
Click to expand...

Yeah, I also spent 2 hours going through what you have done. Only to be told that it's a known bug.... I personally feel that Apple should train/inform their tech support staff on this sort of craps rather wasting everyone's time.

Anyway, there is no known fix for it yet (as I was told). :(
 
I'm having the same issue too, but mine keeps on defaulting to the lowest brightness setting :mad:

However, this usually only happens when I have let my display goto sleep for a long period of time
 
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