9 times out of 10 it's caused by one or more corrupt files on the operating system, in your particular case Windows 10. I've had it happen myself on Windows 8.1
Initially, do the the following to eliminate corrupt files as the cause of the problem.
- Hit Windows key + X to open the power users menu and click Command Prompt (Admin)
- At the prompt, type: sfc /scannow and hit Enter.
When the scan finishes you'll get a report which will indicate whether any corruption was found and whether Windows was able to repair the corruption. If the report says that Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files but wasn't able to repair some of them use the same command prompt to run the following command in bold type:
- DISM.exe/Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth
If you have to run this latter command I suggest you copy/paste it into the command prompt window since if you make a mistake typing it you'll get an error message. To paste a command into a command prompt window you have to use right click and then Paste. In that respect, CTRL+V doesn't work.
DISM can take a while sometimes and anything up to an hour is not unusual. It's essential though that you don't interrupt the process otherwise you risk causing even more corruption. Also, while the command is running you won't see anything happening on screen. After about 20-30 minutes you'll see the figure 20% appear, but that's all until until it finishes.
In the image, DISM repaired the corruption on my own machine recently.
(click to enlarge)
Incidentally, you can lower the brightness quickly by hitting the Fn key + left arrow (assuming you have a laptop).