XPS 14 L421X Battery

TL;DR: Replaced battery with brand new OEM Dell battery from eBay seller, getting permanent battery failure message. What can I do? Long backstory for reference in case it might help diagnose what’s going on.

I have an XPS that I got off Craigslist back in 2014. The battery eventually wore out in early 2017 and I replaced it then. I thought I was getting an original Dell battery from Amazon because the images depicted “Dell” written on the battery, but it turned out to be an off-brand replacement. I went ahead and installed it anyway.

Not long after, I started experiencing an issue wherein the battery would state that it was at 100%, but when I unplugged the charger, it would drop down to 62% or something. I realized that there was a discrepancy between the actual charge and the charge that appeared while plugged in. The solution was that I had to periodically unplug and replug the charger many times to actually get the charge all the way up to 100%.

I tolerated this for the last two years, and recently started to notice that a full charge would only last about 45 minutes. Swiftly thereafter my computer gave me the warning that my battery needed to be replaced. About two days later, one of the battery cells started expanding such that the trackpad got popped out of place, and the bottom plastic cover was bulging. I took this battery out and ordered a guaranteed OEM Dell battery from eBay.

Today I installed the new battery. I plugged in the power cord and before turning on the computer, I pushed the battery indicator button on the bottom of the computer. It first appeared as one light flashing. I waited a few hours, then pushed the button again – this time it was three lights flashing, but not all in a row, rather one, three, and five. I powered on the computer, and the front orange light was flashing rapidly. The first screen displayed the following message: “Your battery has experienced permanent failure and needs to be replaced. Strike the F1 key to continue, F2 to run the setup utility.”

I continued, and the operating system (Windows 7) booted up as normal. I again got a message about my battery experiencing permanent failure, and that if the power cord were to be disconnected that the computer would immediately shut off.

I shut it down and decided to let it try charging up some more. However, I’m noticing that when I unplug and replug the power cord, the orange light on the front shows for 10 seconds and then goes off. When I push the battery indicator button, I get the 1, 3, and 5 lights flashing rapidly still.

It’s possible that I **bleep** something up in the installation as I’m not an expert and I was sort of impatient about the process. I’ve read in other forum threads people recommending updating the BIOS, or updating drivers or something. Haven't tried any of those things yet though. Any help would be much appreciated… I’m considering just buying a replacement used laptop and trying to resell this one if I can’t get the battery to work right.