Windows 7 - HELP - Retrieving Power Settings Information

Hi I'm using a Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit operating system on a Laptop. My problem that i am facing is that i chose the option of a balanced plan and its not showing the plan settings. It keeps telling me "Your power plan information isn't available." I click the "Why can't Windows retrieve this information?" and it gives me questions like this but no possible answers to get it back. I also click the troubleshooter, but that does nothing. There was one time I was able to change the power settings back to how I had it, but the day after, it changed back to not showing me the power information.

Recently the computer went through an updating process. I think that the updating process had to do something with the power settings because i never had a problem with the power setting before the updates.

I first noticed it when i tried to put my Laptop screen down that it actually went to sleep. I never changed the option to put it to sleep. A second time was when i left my computer screen on for 10 minutes, it went to a blank black screen. This has never happened to me before.

I also have an external desktop hard drive running with the laptop. Could that also be a possibility? Would me transferring files to the hard drive on the laptop cause power settings to fail?

Thank you in advance. It would help me a lot if this could be answered ASAP. I do intend to call Windows tech support or any other tech support if its still continuing.