Hello.  I have a Precision 5540.  I attach to my docking station in the office, and then I tell it to sleep and put it in my backpack to go home, rarely opening at home. I don't usually shut it down before putting it in the backpack.  

I have had a problem in recent weeks where I pull the system out in the morning, and the battery has completely drained and the system stopped unexpectedly (closing all the programs I wanted to leave open).  Also, the laptop gets almost too hot to touch in my backpack.

I troubleshot and found that if I switch power plans from "High Performance" to "Dell" or "Balanced", then I do not have the issue of the laptop running, draining the battery, and stopping hard.  So I would set the plan to "Dell" at the end of the day before putting in my backpack.

Then I noticed that the power plan would be set back to High Performance automatically. So I have had to change the power plan to "Dell" as a ritual every day before putting the laptop in my backpack.  Even more weird, after I unselect it, the High Performance option disappears until something automatically selects it again.

Can you help me find out why it won't stay asleep on high performance, or why it keeps switching power plans?  Is it one of the Dell utilities, like "Dell Power Manager"?  

P.S.  The High Performance Power Plan says to put the computer to sleep in 4 minutes if running on battery.

Thanks.