That was too easy.

If you want files from the drive there are ways to get them off and on an external but it is not for the technically uninformed. Best bet is to call a tech that has the capability to deal with the problem. It might not be cheap.

The tools you need are not easy to find, implement and use. Some cost money. Technicians have them, at least the good ones do.

I have a flash drive with all I need to do what is needed, but it is something I paid money and time for back in my tech days.

I know the password, hoping a nosy relative won't easily get through

Sorry for being so blunt in my post. I usually don't steer people towards the tools for password recovery for reasons left unsaid.

I know there are easy ways to not only recover and delete passwords but files off windows, but most people do not and it is generally not information people have in their pocket.

I think you are safe, if you would like to check the security of your password or make sure it is really secure, make it longer than 8 characters, a mix of upper and lower case, a number, a special character and add some sort of padding sequence.

Length and characters are the most important aspects of a password. Which of the following passwords do you think is better?

D0g.....................

or

PrXyc.N(n4k77#L!eVdAfp9

Believe it or not it is the first one as it has one more character and the attacker does not know what your padding scheme is, therefore it will take any attacker longer to breach.

All this information can be had at GRC.com at their Password Haystacks discussion, but for your purposes I just wanted to give a little extra advice.

I like to think in pass phrases. So for example take the simple phrase, Pass Phrase Alpha. Add a padding sequence of $$$, ###, 123 and you get a simple password of; Pass$$$Phrase###Alpha123. Plugging this into the password checker at grc.com and you get a password that would take 93.83 billion trillion trillion centuries for an online attack scenario to break.

Come up with your own personal pass phrase and padding scheme and plug it into the checker at; https://www.grc.com/haystack.htm and see how it does. Make the password as long as you can, the longer the better, over 16 characters is best.

I know I spouted a bunch a stuff and you are probably good with what you got, but thought I would throw this out there for anyone else who may want to know about passwords.

Be safe, cayugafalls

but seems like it is good enough for my purposes. there isn't actually anything too bad on there, maybe some correspondence that calls her a control freak but that is just the truth. so if she gets in no big deal. I had a small concern about dates in properties but I don't think she is competent to even look. and if so...just protecting a friend. none of her business, really. she got his money that is pretty much all she cares about.

She more than likely will not attempt to get in more than a couple times before giving up, so you are good.

I hope it all turns out OK for you and she is not to hard to deal with when the time comes. It is sad that we have to deal with people like that in times of grief. Sorry you lost your friend.

Stay safe.

Feel free to PM me and I'll do what I can.

but will also PM you

I use Ntpasswd, which should work on everything up to Windows 8.1.

It basically boots up a Linux operating system from USB or Removable Disc (e.g. CD) and finds user accounts on the hard disk running Windows and allows you to erase them - giving you user accounts with blank passwords. Then you exit, reboot to Windows, login and change the password to whatever you want.

The downside on that particular program is the user interface is a command line so it isn't really intuitive and displays a lot of information that is not needed. However, it is free. More info here:

https://www.lifewire.com/offline-nt-password-and-registry-editor-review-2626147

There are quite a few programs out there for this. For example:

https://www.lifewire.com/free-windows-password-recovery-tools-2626179


There is probably something more user friendly out there (i.e. graphic interface and password recovery instead of deletion).

The issue with the way Windows was doing its passwords is that people knew exactly where to find it on the hard drive when booting from another operating system - that allows programs to just delete the passwords to give anyone access. I guess Microsoft is just trying to keep the honest people honest.

but also that the computer I am concerned about is safe. a friend died and his asshole nosy sister is coming to snoop...er...dispose of his belongings. he had a few secrets and I have moved them out of her reach but had to leave his laptop on his desk so I put a password on it.

she is pretty tech incompetent (more so than me!) and way too cheap to pay someone to get in to it. hopefully she will just dump it on me with all the other non-valuable belongings after she grabs the jewelry and Navajo rugs.

he died 3 weeks ago and she still hasn't done his obit. but she got into his bank accounts already. and too cheap to ship his remains to Seattle so she had them sent to me without asking first. she is the most horrible "normal" human being besides drumpf that I have ever met.

Losing a friend is difficult enough without people adding to the stress.

As far as data on computers is concerned, it is probably fortunate that most people don't know how simple it is to retrieve the information (unless multiple layers of protection were implemented before saving the data). Hopefully creating a password will dissuade anyone from looking any further.

I'm sorry to hear about your friend. I hope everything works out as best as possible. Take care of yourself.

I got a little ranty there, she's been doing this crap for 2 years and I'm so fed up with her. I know why he tried to stay away from her as much as possible.

The NT password reset is challenging, but a great tool. I use the Falcon 4 boot disk via USB for the remaining WIN 7machines. It includes the NT reset.

It can be challenging getting it to boot from USB. You might have to go into BIOS and enable legacy boot first.

They needed to know his laptop or e-mail password and I remembered it wrong (turned out to be no capital at the beginning). They ran a program and had the password in less than a minute. Huh. So I guess programs like the ones mentioned here were what was used? His laptop was running Windows 7 at the time.