alienware 17 power setting issue

Problem at hand: Auto dim. After it hits a certain threshold on battery life (In this case, it seems to range to anything from 30-50%, which is ridiculous), the monitor gets extremely dim, and my USB ports get disabled. In order to restore normal functionality, I have to plug in the power cord. As you can see, this can be quite annoying. I've already tried adjusting the power settings via CMD (by manually adding in the Scheme_GUID), and tried adjusting it from within the registry by adding the Scheme_GUID there - No dice. I'm most likely going to call Alienware in the AM, but would like to get everyone's opinion here first. Note - I've already gone through several Nvidia drivers, some of which prompt incompatibility issues with my hardware, and others prompting the same error.


Drivers tried:
311.48 (current, recommended drivers from Dell site for my laptop)
320.49
326.41
326.80

Bios Tried.

A00

A03

A04

A05

Specs are as follows:

Alienware MX17
Windows 8 Home Premium 64 bit
Intel i7-4700 MQ 2.40 GHZ (not overclocked)
Geforce 770M (not overclocked)
Intel HD Graphics 4600
16GB ram
DX version 11


Power settings:
Dim display after: 0 minutes for both (plugged in and on battery)
Turn off display after: Never for both
Display brightness: 100% for both
USB selective suspend setting: Disabled for both