I was finally able to get this fixed. I confirmed that the OS for these laptops was Windows 11 Home. Bitlocker is not available on the Home version of Windows 11 so why were these two identical laptops requesting the Bitlocker key while booting up? Apparently, when they were first set up, they both created a Bitlocker key and they stored the key on the MS account used during the initial set up, The date on the keys was the same date that the laptops were received from Dell and setup. What made the problem even worst was that the drives would not unlock if you entered the key during the boot-up. I was able to unlock the drives and turn encryption off by using the manage-bde commands. However, the drives still would not boot after unlocking them and turning off encryption. I had to reset the OS but at least I didn't to do a total reset because unlocking the drives did give me access to the accounts that were setup on the PC. I think Dell is to blame for this problem happening but Dell Support-Assist did make it resetting the OS easier. Still, it took several hours of work over several days to recover the PCs.
I have two XPS 17 9710 laptops with Windows 11 Home edition that were purchased February last year.  Last weekend, they both encountered the same problem: When they boot up, they ask for the Bitlocker key. Both laptops have the Windows 11 Home edition installed and Bitlocker is not available in the Home edition. I went to the Microsoft account that the PC was set up on and there was a Bitlocker key stored for the locked laptop stored on the account and the date of the key was the same date that the laptop was first setup, February 2022. I tried using that key to unlock the laptop but that didn't work. I went into the Command Prompt from Troubleshoot, Advanced Options and entered "manage-bde -status" and got a response that the status was "Unknown". Repairing the OS doesn't work because the drive is not accessible. Anybody got any suggestions? I know I could completely reinstall the OS but I don't know if that would even fix the problem since it is also a hardware problem.  If this was just on one laptop, I would have written the problem off as a hardware failure but that is unlikely since it happened to two laptops simultaneously. Surely these are not the only two  XPS 17 9710 laptops with this problem. Someone else must be having the same problem.
XPS 17 9710 with Windows Home edition locked in Bitlocker boot lop