Display drivers are incompatible with my version of Windows. Any way I can dim my laptop display?

[Amin S]

Hi all, I was tired of using my slow work laptop, so I asked my IT dept if I could buy my own laptop for them to image with the work stuff I need. 

 

They said yes if it was an HP.  So I bought an HP Elitebook 1050 G1 with i7-8850H CPU and UHD Graphics 630 / GTX 1050.

 

As it turns out, my work is okay with me using any version of Windows, as long as it is Windows 10 Enterprise 2015 LTSB version 1507, which sadly is not compatible with either the Intel graphics drivers or the Nvidia graphics drivers I need for this particular laptop. 

 

So I am stuck using Microsoft basic display adapter as the driver, and the display is stuck on max brightness, which for this display is 650 cd/m².  None of the screen brightness controls seem to have any effect.  Not just the hardware button but also the control panel setting, etc.

 

I've looked high and low, and there seems to be absolutely no way to get the Intel or Nvidia drivers installed on this version of Windows.  And my job won't allow me to update to LTSB version 1607.

 

Is there any other way to dim the screen?  It's causing me a lot of eye fatigue.  The only thing I found was this:

 

 

But that doesn't dim the screen in all applications.  Only some of them.

[Amin S]

I found a better app that seems to work to dim the screen in all apps, plus I can assign it to hot keys for adjusting screen brightness:

 

https://care-eyes.com/

 

Whew.  I thought I was going to be stuck.

[deferentlemur]

Glad you found a solution. Have you considered running your work OS in a virtual machine? That would allow your work IT to do whatever they want with it, but you can still take advantage of the GPU if you want.

[Amin S]

12 hours ago, deferentlemur said:

Glad you found a solution. Have you considered running your work OS in a virtual machine? That would allow your work IT to do whatever they want with it, but you can still take advantage of the GPU if you want.

Thanks for your reply.  Is there a way to do that on my own, or do I have to ask my IT department if they will do it for me?

[deferentlemur]

4 hours ago, Amin S said:

Thanks for your reply.  Is there a way to do that on my own, or do I have to ask my IT department if they will do it for me?

You are probably better off trying it on your own. In my experience with IT departments, they may not want to spend the time doing it, or be able to do anything without step-by-step instructions in front of them. It really depends on if they are your buddies or not.

 

A virtual machine is essentially an operating system that runs within your main operating system. Performance is slightly degraded, but the advantage is that you can have a full-blown Windows installation available in whatever version and with whatever software your company requires, without having to limit your main OS, in case you want to take advantage of your hardware that is unsupported by your company OS requirements. In short, your IT guys can mess around however they want without disturbing your personal stuff.

 

I have had good luck with Oracle's VirtualBox software. It essentially creates a disk image file that the program treats as a drive to load the virtual OS from. There are a multitude of tutorials available that teach its setup and use, I would watch/read several of them before starting to make sure you understand how it works.

[Amin S]

52 minutes ago, deferentlemur said:

You are probably better off trying it on your own. In my experience with IT departments, they may not want to spend the time doing it, or be able to do anything without step-by-step instructions in front of them. It really depends on if they are your buddies or not.

 

A virtual machine is essentially an operating system that runs within your main operating system. Performance is slightly degraded, but the advantage is that you can have a full-blown Windows installation available in whatever version and with whatever software your company requires, without having to limit your main OS, in case you want to take advantage of your hardware that is unsupported by your company OS requirements. In short, your IT guys can mess around however they want without disturbing your personal stuff.

 

I have had good luck with Oracle's VirtualBox software. It essentially creates a disk image file that the program treats as a drive to load the virtual OS from. There are a multitude of tutorials available that teach its setup and use, I would watch/read several of them before starting to make sure you understand how it works.

Thank you very much.  I'll do some research and see what I can come up with.