brightness down after log off or lock screen

when I lock the screen the brightness goes down and stays down when I log back in, log out does the same thing, the only way to resolve the issue is to ctrl-alt-bksp or restart the computer, I'm not really sure what information to post for this type of issue so I will let you tell me what to gather but here is some base information:

everything worked fine after my upgrade from 6.10 to 7.04 a while back up till today, the only changes I have made to the configuration recently was to change to the evdev driver trying to get my mouse to work with all the buttons, I have not tried to go back to the explorer/ps2 yet. I took a screenshot before the problem and after, but I won't post because to my surprise they both look exactly the same even though the screen looked different to me at the time, so I assume it is in the video driver or other lower subsystem. I have also tried turning the monitor off and back on which doesn't help although I haven't tried switching screen modes yet either as I hate having to ctrl-alt-bksp all day long.

I am running ubuntu feisty 7.04 on a home built pc, the motherboard is an Intel D865PERL using radeon 9550 graphics card with proprietary driver. my monitor is a Dell W500 if I remember correctly and I am using a DVI connection

thanks in advance for any light you can shed on this problem