Novell and XP password bypass

I have a similar challenge. My friends sis gave him a Dell laptop she got from her boyfriend. Now, when you try to log on a Novell Client appears and if you close that the windows XP logon will appear. He has none of these passwords so basically the whole system is useless. I think all he needs is to get a Windows XP boot disk and just reinstall everything. He tried to go through safe mode but it still asked him for a password