Resetting PC password question

[mstudio]

My best friends 31 year old son passed away...very sad story. They have his PC but don't know the password. I don't know what operating system, I might be able to find out, though.
I have not looked at it, but I'd like to give him some pointers if it is indeed possible. They said it asked for a disk of some sort, but they have not been able to find it yet.

Any help? He was a great kid.

[rob banzai]

With recent versions of Windows people can make a password reset disk ahead of time.

They never do.

If no one knows the password to any of the local accounts it's pretty easy to use a tool like the Offline Windows Password editor. Just boot from it and change the password to whichever account is admin, or if you know the password to a non-admin account the tool can move it to the admin group.

Hiren's boot CD can also be used (it has the Offline password editor bundled with it) in case the boot loader for the first one throws up. Hiren's uses a different boot loader so it's good to have both around.

[mstudio]

Thanks, I will pass this on to him.

[ztirffritz]

I usually use a live CD of OphCrack. It boots into Linux cracks the password file and tells you what the local account passwords are. I haven't tried it on anything newer than Win7 though. Download the image, burn it to a CD and boot from the CD.

http://ophcrack.sourceforge.net/

[mstudio]

Would I just be able to remove the hard drive and connect it to my Mac via USB? Would I see his info or would there still be a password issue?

[rob banzai]

Pulling the drive should work fine. I actually did that just yesterday at work. Pulled the drive from a Win 8.1 PC and used a USB bridge to connect it to a Mac laptop. Drained all the important files right off without issue.

Encrypted files won't work of course, but that's also the case if you use a password crack.

[mstudio]

Thanks all, I live a few hundred miles from him so will try to talk him through a few things. We just got back from the memorial, so I will give them some time.
Thanks again.

[fauch]

When I die I HOPE no one gets into my computer, FB or Gmail accounts. Actually now that we're on the subject, is there a setting that in the case of your untimely demise that no one can access the accounts???

[mstudio]

Here's something that might make you feel better.

http://time.com/3706807/facebook-death-legacy/