Today I installed Windows 8 Consumer Preview on one of my notebook machines and I noticed that I can't access BIOS settings if I use the "Shut down" Windows option on Settings/Power menu. If I use the "Restart" option, my BIOS allow me to enter on it's settings over "F2" again.
Is this happening to someone else? I looked over Windows 8 oficial forum and couldn't find such event. Is this something foreseeable to the new Windows 8?
This is an artifact of your BIOS is treating Hibernation (S4) Boot and Normal Boot (S5) differently in regards with access to the BIOS menus. The default in Windows 8 for shutdown is a Hybrid Boot (which appears to the firmware as a Hibernation), described at length here: Link. They also describe methods to turn off this behavior, such as disabling hibernation altogether.
Shortcut for anyone wishing to do a full shutdown in windows 8 (which will allow you to access the BIOS when powering on afterward). In a command prompt, run:
shutdown /s /t 0
...or just choose the restart option instead (which will do a full shutdown first).
There's different types of restart. A warm restart can skip the bios option and a cold restart (the power button) will always go thru the bios. Apparently whatever software restart option you are using is only doing a warm restart. Try powering off and restarting cold. (I believe this can happens with other OS's too.)
I had the same problem except that I couldn't boot in windows 8, because after I wanted to refresh windows 8 instead of re-installing it.the refreshing stuck at "Setting up a few more things 98%". imagine this horrifying situation that you can't boot to the windows nor able to install another OS. so when Ari Pernik said "BIOS is treating Hibernation" I decided to wipe hibernate. I did this.
so after this method I could go to the Bios setting again
