Game launches in Window and screen brightness for entire PC changes

[Grimstrike]

As the title says, the screen brightness changes automagically and I cannot even manually adjust it in the display settings. A reboot of the PC fixes it, until I launch EQ again.

I am playing this on an older desktop PC that runs Win8.1 Pro with an NVIDIA GTX 760 and the native 1080p resolution. The game is patched and works great with the latest NVIDIA drivers. I do not mind the default windowed on my larger LCD screen, I just wish there was a way to stop the eq client from forcing my entire desktop to be so bright (my eyes burn typing this up on the forum page, it really is so bright and washed out). I hope there is a way to stop this from happening as it ruins the experience for me, please let me know if anyone else has had this issue or if you all need more info from me.

Separate question, can the forum page have a dark mode/night mode? I typically use Chrome to browse, but I can switch to any browser if need be. Thanks community and I appreciate that this game community has been around for so long as I tend to join and leave just to come back years later and dip my toe into the nostalgia.