Well.. Checked with BIOS defaults... did not work.. however a friend of mine suggested something else which did.. he told me to just add COM ports manually using Add New HW Wizard.. well.. all's well that ends well..

About the other problem.. well that problem still exists.. but since time was running out all I did was to reformat all those systems... it seems that problem happened as they were factory installed images from Dell.. so probably those people have put in a password.. Thanks to all you people for your help... I have another question which I will post in a new thread !!!