optiplex 745 help with reinstal

Ok well I have officially lost to much sleep and dazed through
Christmas because of my brain not giving up on this problem. So here goes. My husband brought home a computer from his work that I believe was connected to a server. Of course it has passwords but my dh (dear hubby) is the IT person at work and has the passwords. His boss has about 50 of these dell optiplex 745 desktop computers in a warehouse and is throwing them away. Y? Because they are from employees who have changed the passwords and no one can get into them. It is cheaper for him to buy a new computer than pay someone to fix them. So when an employee is let go so is the computer, on a shelf to collect dust!! Now my dh feels that his techy wife can fix them and save his boss some aggravation. Of course these computers have the software to prevent these things from happening but it was never installed. So here is my problem. I want to set these back to factory condition. I usually work with viruses and issues of that sort but this is all new to me. I have taken the bios battery out for 3 days and all it did was loose time and date. I have cleared bios passwords with jumper pin. but still before desktop starts it asks for a password. In system setup there is no password it says not set. I have tried the f11 restore and can't seem to get that to work. I am not sure if this has the infamous dell partition that I so want to see some day haha! Our sony vio has it and it's awesome! Ok so recap I have a optiplex 745 with intel core 2 duo designed for windows xp but has windows pro and is vista capable. I need to set it back to it's original factory condition. Any help would be awesome. Thanks going to get some sleep.:cry:zzz

 

Did these machines come with any recovery/installation discs? These discs can reset a machine back to original factory settings.

 

http://www.askvg.com/how-to-reset-remove-bypass-a-bios-or-cmos-password/
http://www.measham.force9.co.uk/reference/biosp.htm
http://www.cibecue.com/bypass_bios_passwords.htm
A few links that may provide a clue, did a little research on this in the past...
:zzz

 

No as far as we know there were no discs. His boss basically owns the company and has no idea about the computers. The person who bought them originally has been let go.

 

ok the system starts a screen comes up and says administrator then password which we know then there are 3 choices (nameofemployee)this computer, then company name, and then Psc. So we can log into this computer. The other 2 options are no longer available even in the company I think those would have been old networks or servers right? They had to completely get a whole new network and reconfigure the servers for new computers. So that is why I am trying to figure this out. Reset this computer so we can reset the others to the new network. I just hate to see almost new computers sit on a shelf and go to waste. The company rather get new ones then deal with the old problems. I have been fixing some of the laptops for them that got viruses and some of thei clients computers but I don't have a pretty piece of paper saying I know how to do it. Ugh so if I can fix this problem I may be able to prove I can do this. I always come here love this place for my issues. It's my school! I can't explain most of time how I can fix things it's like breathing for me. I just have issues with technical terms to what I can do. oops sorry so long

 

http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/bootdisk.html

 

Crazy, total waste of money because the problem can occur again. Heey, I could take a few of those machines off your back!

How To Restore or Reinstall Microsoft® Windows® on a Dell™ Computer

2 When the Dell splash screen appears during the computer startup process, press and hold <Ctrl> and then press <F11>. Then, release both keys at the same time.

 

I have tried that and it didn't work

 

Same thing for free:
http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/bootdisk.html

 

well I have did a chat with ugh last resource dell and they are sending me out the disc. Apparently they never sent disks because these computers were to have it on the partition and it never was. The password thing I have them all but I couldn't understand the two options other than this computer. Would that be a server or network? I changed it to home computer and they are gone but now I can't start normally it goes blank but I can in safe mode. I used windows restore and well black screen.

 

ok well I have the disc installed and everything a go!! Yippie but... one little annoying thing that I know is easy to fix but my brain is fried right now! When it starts up the computer asks what os I want to start xp or pro how do i just get it to load to one without asking everytime?