XPS 8300, F2 no BIOS setup

The information on this web page may help. Also try using a USB keyboard, just to get into the BIOS, and see if that helps.

Can you try using F12? I used that before on my XPS 8500 and it had an option to go to BIOS.

Re:pressing F2 does nothing, it just continues on to Windows.

I had an old XPS that did the same. Read a lot of post advising press F2 immediately after power up. I tried all the advices and no change.  I then accidentally found a solution: clear CMOs settings.  Afterwards I was able to enter Bios.  (Weird thing is Dell logo still doesn’t show up during post.)

you may want to try clear CMOs and replace CMOs battery with brand new one too.

Locate the 3-pin CMOS reset jumper (RTCRST) on the system board (see "System Board Components" on page 10).  Remove the 2-pin jumper plug from pins 2 and 3 and fix it on pins 1 and 2. 5 Wait for approximately five seconds to clear the CMOS setting.

F12 doesn’t work either.

Figured it out. Not all USB ports are active at boot time and I had accidentally moved my USB keyboard to one that was inactive before Windows started up.

Back to square one: It seems random now, I have all but lost access to the BIOS settings as I cannot enter the setup menu either at boot time by pressing F2 or from Windows by using the Recovery option in Settings. Probably I will have to reset it by removing the CMOS battery but then I would risk running into problems with my RAID-1 array if F2 still doesn't work as the BIOS is not set to RAID by default.

@lcocea  - Why the sudden need to get into BIOS?

You probably should be looking at your Power plan settings, rather than BIOS.

Reboot PC and open Device Manager. Expand list under USB. Double-click each USB entry and click its Power Management tab, if it has one. Uncheck the box "Allow PC to turn off...". Repeat for all USB entries.

Now expand list under Human Interface Devices in Device Manager and uncheck that same box for any HID entry that has a Power Management tab. Exit Device Manager when done.

Next, open the Windows Power & Sleep screen. Click Additional Power Settings. On next screen identify the active Power plan and click Change Plan Settings. On next screen, click Change Advanced Power Settings.

On that last screen, disable Hibernation, Hybrid Sleep, USB Selective Suspend, and PCI Express Link State Management. Save the changes to the Power plan and reboot.

See if that helps...

@RoHe I'm experiencing some issues with PC resuming from sleep (but not from hibernation) and I was hoping to take another look at the BIOS power config.

Nothing worked, thanks anyway. In any case the days of this machine are numbered as Windows 11 requires secure boot/UEFI and TPM, which the XPS 8300 doesn't support. Das planned obsolescence.

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@lcocea wrote:

Nothing worked, thanks anyway. In any case the days of this machine are numbered as Windows 11 requires secure boot/UEFI and TPM, which the XPS 8300 doesn't support. Das planned obsolescence.

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@lcocea - Win 10 will be supported until Oct'2025 so you should have another 4+ years of life from this PC...

Power PC on and start tapping F2 immediately. Don't wait until you see anything on the monitor. And try a hardwired keyboard that's plugged into a rear USB2 port.

BTW: What video port are you using? If you have an add-in video card, the monitor should be connected to a  port on the card, not to the onboard HDMI or VGA ports. And if you're using HDMI, try VGA, assuming the monitor supports VGA. 

Another option might be to remove the add-in video card, (assuming...) and connect the monitor to one of the onboard video ports and see if that works...