Display Dim not working :(

Hey Im new to the forums so I wasnt sure which category to put this under but Im having trouble getting my netbook to 'Dim' the screen. Ive done a fair bit of reading up but I still cant figure it out. I set my computer to Dim after 1 minute however after a minute the screen flickers once (very quickly, blink and it is missed). So I got a peice of software to work out what was going on called Pwrtest (its microsofts developer kit tool for display monitoring) this is what it showed

Timestamp Session Info
------------------------------------------------------------------------
23:55:38 1 Screen Saver Timeout: 300 seconds
23:55:38 1 Blank Timeout: 900 seconds
23:55:38 1 Dim Timeout: 60 seconds
23:55:38 1 Dim Brightness: 30%
23:55:38 1 Normal Monitor Brightness: 100%
23:55:38 1 Idle Reset
23:56:03 1 Idle: 5 seconds
.....(increased by incriments of 5)
23:56:53 1 Idle: 55 seconds
23:56:58 console Physical Monitor Brightness Changed: 100% -> 30%
23:56:58 console Physical Monitor Brightness Changed: 30% -> 100%
23:56:58 1 Idle: 60 seconds
23:56:58 1 Physical Monitor State: On -> Dim
23:56:58 1 Physical Monitor State: Dim -> On
23:56:58 console Adaptive Dim Timeout: 0 -> 120 seconds
23:56:59 1 Dim Timeout: 60 -> 120 seconds
23:56:59 1 Idle Reset
23:57:04 1 Idle: 5 seconds

This sort of confirmed what I was seeing, it is instantly going from 100% to 30% and straight back to 100% and then it doubles the timeout so it takes twice as long.
I read that certain processes can prevent the monitor from dimming however these reffered to programs such as fullscreen presentations or when watching a film and I haven't been running anything like that during the tests. So I was wondering if anyone knew what else could cause this to happen or if you have had a similar problem

sorry if the question is too complex
thanks

Purely speculation on my part, but I would tend to think that some program or process is causing it to return to normal brightness. The only thing that I can think of is to do a clean boot and see if the problem remains. If not, start reenabling programs until the problem returns, and then you will know where the culprit is hidden.

I tried a clean boot but it didnt solve the problem
Thankyou anyway

I have a similar problem with my new HP TouchSmart 300 series PC. Even though I set the desired brightness level in the Power options, my display jumps back to 100% brightness after power-on, restart, waking up from sleep mode or returning from screensaver mode.

Any of these latter processes appear to negate the manual settings. I'm still trying to understand, whether it's a a Windows 7 issue, or a PC specific hardware/software issue. Any suggestions will be appreciated.