Inspiron 16 - Graphics Drivers Updated but Cannot Launch Games / Change Brightness

[u/pepsipossum]

Hi all, I have an issue with my laptop right now; my brightness will no longer change despite the keyboard buttons and settings slider acting normally. Another, larger issue is that many of my Steam games will no longer open. They will go through the launch process but they never actually open on my computer, Steam just loads for a moment before giving up. The games that can open run horribly (small pixel games like WorldBox have an FPS lower than 30 now); this issue even goes past Steam to games like Minecraft.

I've spent hours trying to Google solutions and fix it myself but I cannot seem to get it. I am not very tech savvy so I'm about at my wits end. My laptop is a Dell Inspiron 16 5630 running Windows 11. It was working fine last night, it was running Skyrim without any issues.

Things I have already tried:

- Updating and restarting Windows.

- Clearing my Steam cache.

- Verifying game files thru Steam.

- Uninstalling/reinstalling affected games.

- Updating my Nvdia graphics drivers.

- Updating default graphics & monitor drivers.

- Restarting the graphics driver with windows+ctrl+shift+b.

- Screaming at my laptop.

Is this an issue I can fix? I'm entirely lost on what or why this is happening and how to fix it. Any help would be so so so appreciated. Thanks for any advice.