Need help with Win7 video display issue?

I like to output video to my TV via VGA from my laptop. Something is causing my "black level" of the image coming out of the laptop to fluctuate depending on overall brightness of the image on the screen. The phenomenon is duplicated on the laptop's screen as well. It isn't an issue with the TV. I want the black level to to be stable; not change; be "fixed". If you've ever calibrated a TV image with "black bars", you understand what I mean. Any ideas what's causing it? I had ATI Catalyst Control Center for the built-in ATI video adapter, but I didn't really use it, so I deleted it. I was able to stabilize the black level when I turned the Catalyst Control Center On, but it was a hassle to turn it on each time I powered the laptop up. Plus, I like to keep things as simple as possible. It seems as though something on this laptop is trying to control my black level, probably to "help" my viewing experience, but I want it to stop "helping" me I assume when I used to turn on the Catalyst, it took over whatever that feature was. I'd just like to turn that feature off without the Catalyst running.

thanks!

Compaq CQ62-255NR laptop
AMD Athlon II P320 2.1 Ghz
3 GB ram
ATI Radeon HD 4250

NoN said:

You might have to reinstall the Ati Control Center from you MFG's site...do not have that probs when my CCC is on. It duplicates well and black are black, not grey. Something to do in color display changed?
Or set the monitor "adaptive brightness" turned off/disable in services.msc or in your Power Plan settings.

I don't have the problem when CCC was on, either. The "problem" went away when I turned on CCC. I would prefer to keep things simple and not have to activate CCC. I'm not a "gamer".
Adaptive brightness in services is set to manual and is not running.
It's not a "brightness"/white level issue. The level of black fluctuates from either dark black to gray depending on relative brightness of the image. Sort of like a "dynamic picture" setting on a TV. Looking at different black level calibration screens where you might have black bars on a light background and then a dark background, the level of black should stay the same. Mine black levels fluctuate without CCC on.

Surely, there must be a setting somewhere that is automatically adjusting the black levels, but that I can deactivate. I never had this problem with other computers running XP.
I also don't understand how adjusting refresh rates would affect black level.