Looks like I had a bad or marginal keyboard.  Switching keyboards allowed me to access f12 and update the bios.  
I am not able to update my bios on the XPS 8930. Running the exe file does not work. Pressing F12 or F2 when the splash screen comes up will not get me into the bios. It just slightly delays the boot to Windows. Any suggestions?
XPS 8930, unable to update BIOS?