Problem with color management

I am familiar with CM and know how to do it. But I am having a particular problem and hope somebody can help.

I am calibrating a dell u2410 to epson printers. My epsons work best with a lum value of 90 to 95.

The first time I calibrated the dell, I got 95 which is perfect. But now brightness has increased and the lum is 99. But the brightness control on the dell is set at zero and does not allow going below zero.

I would like to get the lum value down a bit. What to do? Gain adjustment doesn't help.

Really? My U2311 is running at 90 cd/m^ and a black point of 0.4 cd/m^ with a setting of Brightness 30 and Contrast 65. Different model of course, but two things come to mind: what's your Contrast setting and are you sure that OS or graphic card software are at default for display brightness?

Yes, it sounds like there are some funky hardware versus software settings. What hardware controls does your display have (ie, things you can change with display controls versus adjustments to the graphics card)?

Kirk

Elle, Kirk, thanks for your replies.

I know there is brightness, contrast, and gain. The monitor is not on right now and will have to boot that machine to see what else is available. Also will check contrast setting.

As to whether card and OS are at defaults, I am not sure. Card probably is. It's an nvidia chipset, and I left all settings alone in the driver. As to OS, don't know. The monitor is on a machine with Win 7 64. I use an old (but excellent) DTP-94 puck with Monaco EZ color to calibrate. I did have to search for a workaround to enable the old software on Win 7. But the first time I calibrated it, it came out perfect.

Also, I still do most of the grunt work on a Win XP machine running CS2. The monitor there is a HP LP2475w (also a 24 inch IPS) that is calibrated perfectly (around lum 92-95). When I pass files from the dell monitor to the HP monitor, they are perfect, never needing bright or contr correction. I do printing (epson 3800) off the HP monitor and they are perfect.

I am concerned about the dell calibration because the XP machine is getting old and I am slowly trying to migrate all work to the CS5/dell machine.

Again, thanks for your time. Any help is appreciated.

What about switching monitors between the two machines?

I guess I could, but I would not want to switch them back later. I'm trying to migrate from the Win XP CS2 machine to the Win7 CS5-64 machine as quickly as possible. I plan on purchasing LR4 and installing it on the Win7 box.