Dell Lattitude E7440 Ultrabook, Win 7 Pro, no Biometric swipe installed, but Win login asks for finger swipe

I have a client who has been going round and round with various Dell support technicians via warranty to no avail for a few months now.  Facts:

• Dell Lattitude E7440 Ultrabook
• Windows 7 Pro w/SP1
• Client purposely did not purchase the laptop with the Biometric finger swipe device - IT IS NOT INSTALLED and verified by going into Device Manager
• ISSUE: Windows logon stalls for 30-45 sec. asking him to swipe his finger for logon, then after a timeout, there is the ability to ignore and login to desktop.  Afterwards, the laptop works fine.  This appears to have been an issue from Day 1 after he setup the computer.

I am trying to support my client after the fact as he has received poor service from the Dell technicians and is very frustrated.  Technicians have remotely connected and removed software and changed configurations to attempt to resolve the issue, but my client did not keep tabs on exactly what was removed or changed. The last technician position is to backup and perform a full recovery back to the factory image.

Everything on the laptop is working fine except the nuisance request to swipe a finger for login and waiting the 30-45 sec. for it to time out when he does not have a fingerprint device installed to begin with.   I would like to avoid wiping the drive and starting over as I believe the same issue will continue to exist.  My experience with other brands is that there is usually a BIOS setting and/or specific security software to disable the Biometric device and/or disable biometric login.  I have searched the BIOS and cannot find a setting for this.  I have searched through any Dell/Intel related security software and cannot find a setting to disable this.  Because I do not know what software was uninstalled, I do not know if a key one is missing that would support this.

Main question is: Why should a Biometric fingerprint login request come up when there is not such a device installed?  Options besides wipe and re-install?

Thanks in advance for any experience/advice you can provide,

KAZ