A woman I know in her early 30's had her husband die in an accident. She wants to access his Windows 7 laptop that has a password on it.
I know there are many methods of cracking Windows 7 passwords and resetting them, but has anybody actually done it recently? The methods I've tried so far have failed.
I have been able to boot off of a Windows 7 USB stick and get to a command prompt, but have not been able to crack the password or reset it.
I wonder if it would be better to use a Windows 10 usb stick stick to crack the Windows 7 computer?
I don't live in the same country as the woman, so it is tricky. If I had physical access, I would pop out the hard drive and have my way with it.
I've done a lot of searching for methods, and software which is supposed to work that did not. I have tried versons of UUKeys, Kon-Boot, and Ophcrack.
I don't know if it would be easier to crack the password, or reset it. Resetting it hasn't worked for me either. A funny thing is that now Microsoft has everybody's login passwords which they can use to lock you out of your own computer.
People should also be aware that no password prevents files from being accessed on a computer. The only way to protect files is to encrypt them. Almost nobody bothers to encrypt files.