[Help] XPS 14 ignoring BIOS battery charge limits (goes to 100%) + Dell Optimizer is totally broken
Hey everyone,
I'm completely stuck with my Dell XPS 14 (Service Tag: 8ZGS5C4) and could really use some help. I've got two weird issues going on and I'm not sure if they're related.
First, I set my battery charge limits directly in the BIOS (v 1.9.1) using the Custom mode (start at 50%, stop at 80%). It worked perfectly for weeks. But a few days ago, without me touching anything, Windows started completely ignoring the limit and now it charges straight to 100% every time.
I figured some Dell software might be overriding it in the background, which led me to the second issue: Dell Optimizer is completely bricked. I can't open it. I tried to uninstall, repair, or update it using the latest installer (v 6.3.3.0), but the setup wizard crashes after a few seconds with the message: "The wizard was interrupted before Dell Optimizer could be completely installed." So now I'm stuck with a ghost app that I can't cleanly get rid of.
I've already tried a bunch of troubleshooting on my end:
- Draining the battery and doing a full cycle
- Resetting the BIOS to defaults and setting up the 50/80 limit again
- Holding the power button for 40 seconds to drain flea power/hard reset (though the PC just booted up normally, so I'm not even sure it actually did an EC reset)
- Uninstalling the Microsoft ACPI-Compliant Control Method Battery driver in Device Manager
- Updating the motherboard drivers (Intel Chipset, Dynamic Tuning, etc.)
Nothing has worked so far. Has anyone ever dealt with Windows bypassing BIOS battery limits like this? And do you think it's connected to this Dell Optimizer bug? (If it is, any ideas on how to force-uninstall it since the official uninstaller crashes?).
Thanks in advance for any advice, I'm slowly losing my mind over this!