Control Panel's Brightness is dead

[Stargate]

I play games with high brightness settings, higher than the games themselves allow, so I used to change this through Nvidia Control Panel (Gamma & Brightness sliders). But now this doesn't work anymore, which means I can't play certain dark games (eg Doom 3) anymore.

It used to work but now maxing out the sliders doesn't do anything anymore, not in games or on the desktop.
I have a 7800GS (Agp) with the 178.24 drivers on XP SP2 (Amd A64 3200+, 2Gb Ram).

Will re-installing the drivers help?
Thanks.

 

[evongugg]

You might want to upgrade your drivers at the same time.
Also you could change the brightness on the monitor, using the buttons.

 

[evongugg]

You might want to do a system restore to an earlier time.

 

[Stargate]

My monitor's brightness is already all the way up.
I maxed out the settings, then started Doom 3 and ingame all was dark.
But when I alt-tabbed, the icons of active programs were all bright like they should be. Then I quit the game and the desktop and the alt-tabbed icons were back to normal.

I'm not too keen on upgrading drivers, I'll use it as a last resort attempt.