Desktop mode battery charge drains the battery

You should not allow it to drain completely. That is old time battery maintenance. Today's lithium batteries should be recharged well before completely drained. Turn off desktop mode since it limits the battery charge and performance. What does the battery meter say? Open Mobility Center to see.

Read this-- http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3518/t/19460831 

What a fiasco this was.  As I said earlier turning off Desktop Mode Battery Charge did not stop the drain.  There was noting I could do to stop it so it did reach 5% and it did shut down.  When I went to power up it said that the battery charging had been temporarily disabled and to press F2 to fix it.  That just told me to unplug the laptop and wait for the temperature ti return to normal and plug it back in.

I unplugged it, waited about 10 minutes and plugged it back.  Now it said that it was preparing for automatic repair, or something like that and just stayed there.  I call Dell service.  The Dell technician had me do the following:

1. Press and hold the power button for 1 minute (no change).
2. Hold the shift key and continuously hit the F8 key as it is powering up (no change)
3. Continuously hit F12 as it is powering up.  This went to the Boot manager screen.
   1. Selected the first option (can not remember what it is but it was supposed to continue with a normal boot).  Went to a blank screen.
   2. Did it again and this time selected diagnostics.  Went to a blank screen
   3. Insert the Windows disk that came with the lap to and boot from that (there was no Windows disk in the box with the laptop).

At this time he was out of ideas.

One thing that I forgot to mention is that a week or so ago I had placed a service call because the power plug on the side of the computer was too loose and kept on getting unplugged.  Dell sent a technician on site that replaced the power pack and the mother board (the power plug receptacle is build into the mother board).  He powered up after that and everything looked normal so he left.  When I went to connect to the Internet, it said that the media was disconnected for both the wifi and Ethernet connections.  Called Dell service explained the situation and the first thing that happened was that they asked me to allowed them access to my computer, even though the reported problem was that I could not connect to the internet (how stupid can you get).  In any case we tried several things, such as using the same Ethernet cable and connection that was working fine with my work laptop, This ended up with another on side technician being scheduled to come to replace the mother board (again) and the wifi card.  I was told that it would take from 1 to 2 business days (it took 2). 

Later that night, I decided that I would use the Laptop to watch a DVD movie.  Guess what.  The DVD would not work (it worked fine two days before the mother board replacement) .  Called Dell service.  Explained the problem, including what had happened before.  Was asked to allow the then to connect to my computer (even though I had just told them that I could not connect to the internet, they really need to trained their technicians to at least realize that if there is no internet connection there is no way for them to connect).  She had me try some thinks and we found that device has a problem in device manager.  She had me delete the device and then read it (no help) and then to download the driver from their web site and i blew up (how can I download anything if I have no internet connection).  Got transferred to a supervisor that said that said that it would be best to wait until the mother board and wifi card were replaced to troubleshoot the DVD drive problem.  I said fine.

 Two days later a new technician shows up and replaces the mother board (again) and the wifi card.  Now I can connect using either method, but the DVD is still out,  He said that I had to call Dell service for that.  I did.  While I was waiting on hold I did some searches on the internet and found some hits that talked about deleting some entries on the registry (the error on device manager said that it was a registry problem).  When I finally got a technician on the phone and explained the problem, he asked me to allow him to access my computer (at least this time I did have an internet connection).  Since by now I have figured out that they assume that the customer is an idiot and anything they suggest is nonsense and suggesting anything just delays the process, I said nothing about the internet hits.  After he went trough his 'canned' script on what to do for this kind of problems (including several 'can I put you on hold for 2 minute so I can ...) he came up with the same solution that I had found on the internet and that fixed the problem.

Now back to the current fiasco.

Since the technician ran out of ideas, and in view of the prior service calls, that the best thing to do was to send an on site technician to replace the mother board (for the 3rd time) and the memory sticks.  If that did not fix it then he would re-image the hard drive.  I told him in no uncertain terms that re-imaging the hard drive was not an option unless they provided me with some way to get my files out of it before the re-imaging.  Transferred to a supervisor.  We finally agreed to have the mother board and memory sticks replaced and if that did not fix the problem we could discuss what to do about the hard drive.  The technician wold come in one to two business days.

Later last night, since the battery was now fully charged, I decided to power up again.  This time the Preparing for automatic error repair stayed on for about 5 seconds and then it went to the Windows 8.1 version of the 'safe boot' screen where I selected to continue with a normal boot.  It worked and I have had no problems since then (although it has been only about 12 hours since that happened).

Needless to say that I am not impressed at all with the quality of the Dell technicians.