Installed new RAM, shows 8GB installed but still says (2.75GB)usable.

video describing how to reset bios by removing battery
Dell Optiplex 745: How to Reset BIOS CMOS Battery - YouTube

but there is no reason to remove the battery if you can get the bios to flash correctly, and I found the below video which should allow you to create a bootable usb that will boot on your system. It formats the USB to emulate a removable floppy disk. Since your system wants a removable boot disk I am thinking it will avoid the Verfying DMI error you got the last time you tried to boot from USB. Right at the start of the video you will need to select "dos bootable disk" and "1.44MG" on the first menu, then format the usb like he describes.

Formatting USB Stick for Floppy Drive Emulator - YouTube

then copy over the bios files onto that usb that I think you already have from the linustechtips forum, then boot from the usb, then run the bios update utility

here is the program he is using to create the usb to look like a bootable floppy disk. It runs in windows 7, I just tried it.

http://search-ext.abb.com/library/Do...&Action=Launch

Wow ok this is legit what I needed, thanks for putting your time into this I really do appreciate it. As I said I am away and will be for at least a month now, but when I get back home, I will definetly try your method out and update you if it worked, Many Thanks, Dijon